It was a tremendous Saturday night for soccer in Pittsburgh. Sellout crowd at Highmark Stadium. Seriously quality match between the Riverhounds and Rochester. And on top of all that, it was Pittsburgh Spirit night, with several members of our city's briefly beloved indoor team on hand -- Paul Child, John O'Hara, Dave MacKenzie, among others -- with Spirit shirts given away.
Not going to lie here: My family had season tickets to the Spirit at the Civic Arena, including that year where they outdrew the Penguins in their own building, so it was beyond cool meeting some of these guys for the first time.
"Great, great times," MacKenzie was recalling. "It felt like the whole city was with us."
Sometimes it felt that way. The Spirit would routinely top 12,000 when a rival like the Cleveland Force came to town, and they averaged 2,000 more fans than the Penguins at the Arena in 1983-84, the season that brought Mario Lemieux and a dramatic shift in winter consumer spending around here. But they were a blast. (Not Baltimore Blast, but an actual blast.) Games in the old Major Indoor Soccer League usually wound up 7-5 or even into double-digits, and it was always a little odd to see the ball caroming off boards and glass to stay in play. But the skill level was undeniable, with top talents worldwide gladly adjusting their games for American paychecks.
The promotion of the Spirit was ... eh, a little edgy:
And on the radio ads, the innuendo went that much further: 'Hot legs! Hot time! Hot action! Just too hot to handle! The Pittsburgh Spirit: We have 20 guys in shorts who can go all night!'
And here, if you've never seen it, is a taste of Spirit vs. Force at the Arena:
Different, huh?
But it worked. All of it. And if it hadn't been for Edward DeBartolo Sr., the man who owned both the Spirit and Penguins, turning his interest almost entirely to hockey, it might have gone on a lot longer than the eight years we got, ending in 1986.
On this Saturday night, in front of Pittsburgh's current professional franchise, it was wild to see and hear so many people in attendance who had such vivid memories of those years, not least of whom is Child, one of the Spirit's leaders then and one of local soccer's most visible figures now, including his involvement with the Hounds.
"I'm so proud of this," Child said of this evening. "We had some good players, some good teams, and we're always grateful for the support we received."
The support on this night was for the Hounds, and eventually it got loud. Rochester's long been notorious for packing it in defensively, so the loudest noises came from passing trains ... until this elegant give-and-go between Kevin Kerr and Kay Banjo, culminating in a world-class finish by Kerr in the 70th minute.
The place just exploded, and only 20 minutes remained.
Alas, the Rhinos equalized on a header in the 90th minute and pulled the plug on the whole place. Especially the players. I don't think I've seen them or Dave Brandt that down all summer.
I get that. They need the points to get into the USL playoffs. It's that time of year. But Brandt's got this process tracking better than it's been in a long time. The Hounds matched one of the league's better teams for 90 minutes, and they did so in every way. The starters are pushed by new depth. The approach is on the attack. There's nothing not to like.
On top of that, the Hounds are drawing better, catching on through the developmental levels of the local soccer community, and it's beginning to feel like only a matter of time that the whole thing really launches.
But, as Kerr told me afterward, "Not right now. This hurts. It hurts."