Watching beer handling could help improve ball handling

[ With Dawnell Smith ]

Published: October 18th, 2007 02:10 AM
Last Modified: December 16th, 2007 02:22 AM

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Less than a year ago I got my own game. Soccer, I mean.

I bought a ball and shin guards after one of my son's games when I asked, "Hey, does it bother you when I yell about open lanes when you're on the field?"

Ever the gracious boy, he replied, "Well, it's OK, I guess, but it's kind of annoying."

So I decided to shut up and get my own blooming game.

After watching my boys play for years, I picked up elements of the game quickly, like how to elbow for position and find an empty spot on the field. The game is killer on the joints, for sure. It squeezes the oxygen out of your lungs and makes your knees ache, it turns your hamstrings into knots and forces you to brace for pain the next morning.

Hey, I grew up with two brothers and a mob of neighborhood rowdies, all of us playing football in the mud and baseball in the road. All through school I played volleyball and basketball and even Little League until high school. I know what it means to live the sporting life. I know the drive to sprint, win, argue and collapse from fatigue, agony or triumph -- but usually agony.

But soccer? At 45 years?

With no money for a mid-life crisis, who wouldn't love ripping up the field with 25-year-old punks with soccer resumes a meter long? Or colliding with one of these ringers and then getting up first.

My only problem is ball control. Those two words have yet to gel in my skill set. I can scrum with the best of them, but beeline the ball to the midfielder or pound the ball to the near corner of the net or keep the ball from floundering behind my heels? No way, sister.

Which brings me to my performance on the pitch last weekend, the day after the beer train. Granted, the beer train features lots of ridiculously, insanely lascivious food such as gravlax and bread pudding, but no one calls it the food train. It's a beer train, the marketing partnership between the Alaska Railroad and Glacier Brewhouse.

It's five rolling hours along Turnagain Arm with a guided tour of Bocktoberfest and Imperial Blonde, Oatmeal Stout and Hefeweizen. Two hundred people drank and ate and grooved to disco, metal and R&B as the train chugged past Portage on a fine day.

I noticed something on this rail journey, aside from how spirited folks got within the hour. I noticed that beer train veterans knew how to walk without spilling and could carry up to four glasses of beer to their companions several cars back without losing a drop. How? By sipping the slosh factor off each glass.

Novices, on the other hand, would lurch this way and that, slopping amber on the floor while holding a single beer.

This got me thinking. If I could play soccer with beer instead of a ball, I might master control of my game after all.

Beer releases and other things worth mentioning:

• The Eagle River Boys and Girls Club (www.bgcalaska. org) will throw its annual brewfest tonight starting at 6 at the Eagle Rivers Lions Club (Mile 2, Eagle River Road). Local breweries pour some of their finest brews, while lots of goodies get auctioned, chewed and gulped, so take a checkbook and an empty stomach. Tickets are $30 with food and beer, and proceeds support the Boys and Girls Club (694-9123).

• Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter by Anchorage's Midnight Sun Brewing Co. (www.midnightsunbrewing.com) won gold in the experimental beer category of the Great American Beer Festival in Denver last weekend. The brewery's take on a one-of-a-kind style beat out 33 other beers. (I drank my first bottle of this year's batch on Saturday and found it absolutely stunning -- chewy, rich and balanced.)

Other Alaska winners include the Moose's Tooth Brewing Co. (www.moosestooth. net) with a bronze medal for its Smokin' Willie Porter in the smoke-flavored porter category; and Alaskan Brewing Co. (www.alaskanbeer.com) with silver for its 2006 smoked porter in the same bracket, along with two bronze medals for its stout and the 2004 smoked porter in the stout and aged beer categories.

• Midnight Sun's latest sin beer, Wrath, arrived just in time for the fall holidays. If you thought Gluttony had spunk, try this one. The gold-hued Belgian double IPA has citrus, peppery aromas and a fine, dry finish. Look for it in big bottles at the brewery (7329 Arctic Blvd., 344-1179) or at liquor stores around town. And don't forget the Imperial Pumpkin Chocolate Porter and Humpback Jack Pumpkin Ale, all out now.

• Oh, and remember Oktoberfest? Well it's not over yet. Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse (276-BEER, www.humpys.com) will do one more German beer dinner with music at 6 p.m. Sunday. The festival of five dishes and six beers costs $49.95 per person, reservations required.

• Finally, kudos to everyone who showed for the toast to the late Michael Jackson at Cafe Amsterdam last month. Every brewery in the state donated beer, with one donating merchandise instead. Both Alaska meaderies joined the cause, too. Together with people around the world, the mob of beer fans lifted their glasses to Jackson, a beer author destined to live forever through words and wisdom. Money collected during the event will support the National Parkinson Foundation.

?• Find Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith at adn.com/contactdsmith or call 257-4587.

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