Give handball a sporting chance
ATHENS -- I saw a game that featured, with only the slightest expansion of our basic concepts, fast breaks, fouled in the act of shooting, sneakaways, pivotmen, turnovers, weaves, give-and-gos, lookaway passes, backward bounce passes, skip passes, a penalty shot, a backdoor play, and great shot blocking worthy of a Russell or a Roy.
It is not basketball or hockey, but it combines elements of both, with a little dry water polo mixed in. It is a game we, the US of A, should be good at because it calls for precisely the kind of athletes we have by the thousands. But we --there is no other way to say it -- stink. We have never won a medal in (Team) Handball and for the second Olympiad in a row, and third out of four, we didn't even qualify.
The Handball Wise Guys say the gold should go to Croatia, which advanced to the semifinals yesterday by defeating Greece, 33-27. It would be the Croats second championship, as they bagged gold in 1996.
There are many, many, and I mean many worse ways to spend an hour and a half than to watch a good handball game. That's an hour and a half to play a 60-minute game. We American basketball fans can only dream about something like that, huh?
Just in case you have absolutely no idea what this game is all about, the basics are simple. The object is to throw a ball about the size of a large grapefruit with the texture of a volleyball into a goal that is 2 meters high and 3 meters wide. Each team has a goalkeeper and six other players. The goalie, as is the case in other sports, has to be borderline crazy because he has zero protection and must try to stop shots that are thrown very hard from very close. The court is 40 meters by 20 meters, and there is a semicircular line with a diameter of 15 meters that forms a goal area. Only the goalie can be inside that area.
Players can only hold the ball for three seconds before passing, dribbling, or shooting. Two dribbles appear to be the maximum (I'm not sure, but no one exceeded that). A player must launch a shot from behind the aforementioned arc, but he is allowed to take a running leap and land inside after he has released the ball.
The game has ancient roots, but it took its present format at the end of the 19th century. The game has long been associated with Scandinavian countries, but the essential rules were drawn up by German Max Heiser. It was played both outdoors and indoors, and, in fact, entered into the Olympics in 1936 as an outdoor sport. It was dropped, but then reentered into the Olympics as an indoor sport in 1972. The International Handball Federation was founded in 1928, and you'll never guess who was its first president. That was none other than the notorious Avery Brundage. But as powerful as Brundage was, he did not succeed in making handball into America's national pastime.
As proof that it is a big world, consider that in various parts of Europe there are handball leagues. The players at this level of competition are pros. No wonder Americans can't compete.
But we could. The game is made for renegade basketball players, because size is desirable (Croatia pivot Igor Vori is 6 feet 8 inches), or even hockey players, given the large amount of incidental contact. But where do you start? How do you convince a kid to become a handball player in a country where few have ever seen the game? Is the idea of just making it to the Olympics enough to entice someone into the program?
Maybe someone should distribute a tape of this particular contest. It would serve as a pretty decent primer. There was atmosphere-plus, of course, as there always is when anyone from Greece is participating. But the Croats don't get outshouted, or outsung, for that matter, without a fight. (Speaking of singing, are we the only country whose fans don't routinely break into song? Everyone else has a number or two that everyone knows to serve as a psych-up song. Maybe we should try "Proud Mary.")
The teams played fairly evenly with the exception of one first-half run when the Croats broke a 4-4 tie to go up, 17-7. Croatia led, 19-11, at the half, having connected on 70 percent (19 for 27) of its shots to Greece's 37 (11 for 30).
Included in Croatia's total were four successful penalty shots in four tries. Talk about a mismatch. A penalty shot is attempted from a mere 7 meters away. The offensive players are allowed to fake, reload, and do all sorts of stuff. It's pretty hard to stop a penalty shot. But Croatia goalkeeper Vlado Sola stopped one on Greece's Alexis Alvanos, and then stopped a point-blank shot again when the rebound went right back to Alvanos. Sola followed that up by making three more saves in succession. No handball expert, I, but five consecutive saves in this game would seem to me to be stop-the-presses stuff.
No virtuosos need apply, however. Teamwork is clearly essential. No one is barging through the defense, so the best way to get a decent shot is to have sleight-of-hand ball movement. But a fast break is a fast break, particularly off a turnover. It is no different than basketball: throw the ball away 30 feet from the goal and watch the opponent take it all the way for a score. We've got a lot of speedy point guards who can't shoot. This could be the game they've been waiting for.
The game should not be such a hard sell for Americans. TV would insist on more timeouts, of course, but its refreshing brevity would fit nicely into a two-hour time slot. I could see some of our 6-5, 6-6, and even 6-9 ath-a-letes transforming the game. If we start now, we might have a pretty decent team by 2012.
C'mon, America, we're just giving away a medal here. Handball is calling.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@globe.com.
