Columnist Ron Kantowski: The new Little League: Can soccer replace baseball’s traditions?

Monday, Oct. 31, 2005 | 9:12 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Based on everything I've been hearing, children's soccer is the new Little League, only without the bubble gum cards.

Well, I was wrong.

A Sunday drive out to the Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex -- the Gateway to Summerlin at West Lake Mead and Tenaya -- for the Mayor's Cup Soccer Tournament definitely confirmed that youth soccer is the new Little League.

But I also saw a boy clutching a pack of Major League Soccer trading cards that he had gotten from a vendor on the makeshift midway. Two dollars a pack, he said. No slab of pink gum. I asked if he was going to put Landon Donovan in the spokes of his bicycle, and he looked at me as if I were from another planet.

Still, at 9 a.m. the place was loud enough without an assist from the cardboard likeness of a domestic soccer star and a clothes pin. A total of 185 boys' and girls' youth soccer teams representing 10 western U.S. states and Mexico converged on the expansive Bettye Wilson complex and a similar one at Buffalo and Washington to chase the spotted ball around.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, whose likeness on an official T-shirt seemed to be moving better than the Guatemala and Iran national soccer jerseys that also were for sale at the concession tents, was promising a "surprise souvenir" for the winners.

One can only hope it wasn't a bottle of gin, which is what he told a group of local fourth graders was the one thing he couldn't do without on a deserted island.

The one thing you couldn't do without Sunday was a map of the soccer complex, which features 10 fields, although I couldn't see that far to verify it.

"Do you know where Field 1 is?" a soccer mom asked a soccer dad who looked like he might have some semi-official reason for being there that didn't include coaching his son.

"I can show you on the map," soccer dad said, pointing to a sign just past the entrance.

It reminded me of the movie multiplex diagram in the final scene of "Bachelor Party" where Tom Hanks is trying to find Tawny Kitaen.

Eventually, I made my way toward Field 4 -- or was it 8? -- where children in red shirts were running up and down the pitch with children in green shirts. It was just like real soccer -- there were no goals and few scoring chances.

A woman wearing a purple T-shirt, black stretch pants and rhinestones on her flip-flops began to pester the coach.

"Why don't they pass it to Lexie?" she asked.

"We can't change strategy now," the coach said.

"Lexie's wide open," she said.

"Yada, yada, yada," the coach said.

At that moment, one green passed the ball to another green, who made like Mia Hamm, booting the spotted ball into the roof of the net.

Lexie's mom returned to her portable canvas folding chair.

Yup, soccer is the new Little League, all right. Only instead of being named Timmy Lupus and exiled to right field, the bench-warmers are named Lexie and hidden at left fullback.

Then another soccer mom asked if I knew directions to Field 9. I told her to take the Slaughson cutoff and cut off her Slaughson. She looked at me as if I were from a more distant planet. I guess she was too young to remember Art Fern and the Matinee Lady. Or, for that matter, Johnny Carson.

Where was I? Oh yes ...

I now understand why soccer is more appealing to children -- and their parents -- than Little League.

For starters, it's great exercise, and you can't buy Red Bull at the concession stand. I think one of the mission statements of youth soccer is for kids to run off their youthful energy, not supplement it by consuming mass quantities of rocket fuel in the handy four-pack.

It also appears the gap between the haves and have-nots is a lot less noticeable. Nobody has to come to bat with the bases loaded and their team down a run. So there's less pressure. And in the game I saw, the biggest and best player was being used on defense, of all places.

Still, as I wandered away from Field 10 -- or was it 6? -- I couldn't help but remember all the times my old man would come home from the steel mill and we'd grab our baseball gloves and play catch on the sidewalk. Do today's children dribble the soccer ball with their fathers, I asked myself.

As for exercise, well, we had that on the sandlot, too. If you were ever in the on-deck circle when the big kid took a 20-mph "fastball" deep onto Old Man Wilson's front porch, you know what I mean. You'd take off like Lou Brock even before you heard the sweet sound of breaking glass ...

Then a cheerful man with an accent, wearing the light blue and white colors of the Argentina national team, interrupted the pleasant, unchaperoned memories of my distant childhood.

"Do you know which one is Field 5?" he asked.