Where Were You When Brooks Scored?

When your job is not that of full-time blogger, work sometimes gets in the way of posting. So it was with me on Monday, as I watched the U.S. v. Ghana match not at an American Outlaws watch party, or in the comfort of my own home, but on a boat in the middle of the Hudson River.

Fortunately a combination of my on-and-off whining for several weeks and the ingenuity of the good folks at USLAW meant that we had our own watch party on board, even though it was via the internet and on Univision (there was no sound anyway, so the fact that few of us could have understood any part of the broadcast other than "Gooooooooaaaaallllllllllll" really didn't matter).

As we motored under the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge (under which there was also a watch party significantly better attended than ours), some ate, some took in the sights, and others watched the game and cheered and groaned and critiqued (it was a bunch of lawyers after all) and was on the edge of its collective seat for 90 minutes plus stoppage time -- interminable, excruciating stoppage time.

And while, admittedly, the reaction of those lawyers wasn't as exuberant as that of many of those shown in the video below, I wouldn't trade the experience for any others - except maybe for those who were in attendance in Natal. 

Just as with Landon Donovan's goal against Algeria in 2010, I suspect I'll always remember where I was when I jumped and shouted and acted like a fool when John Brooks' header went in and the U.S. vanquished the demon of Ghana in the World Cup. After the game, we glided past the Statue of Liberty and I took a picture and Tweeted this:

Good on you John Brooks, the unlikeliest of goal scoring heroes, and you Jurgen Klinsmann for, once again, making magical substitutions at crucial times (thinking more of the addition of Graham Zusi - who delivered the cross that Brooks headed - than Brooks here).

Aaron Johannsson kept yelling in his Brooks' ear after the goal, "just believe it." John's not alone Aaron. It took us all a while to believe.