Dear Mr. Levine,

Speaking on behalf of U.S. soccer fans everywhere, we would like to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your considerable efforts in raising the profile of professional soccer in this country.

We are referring, of course, to your comments lambasting Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber, who had the gall to compare his pathetic little league to your employer, the mighty New York Yankees baseball club.

To casual observers, your attack on Mr. Garber was a simple matter of you falling for one of the oldest (and cheapest) PR stunts in the book. This trick calls for a small and insignificant entity to compare itself, by way of insult, to one of the leading enterprises in its field in the feint hopes said enterprise takes the bait and returns the favor. If it chooses to do so, the result is a PR bonanza for the small and insignificant entity.

On the surface, this is precisely what happened, as news columnists and bloggers rallied to Garber’s cause. The National Sports Review called you a bully and told you to shut up. The Times Herald-Record said you “looked lower than a preschool limbo stick.” The Hartford Courant said you made a fool of yourself. The New York Post said you looked persnickety. Even The New (Yankee) Stadium Insider said they weren’t sure what you were trying to accomplish with your comments, adding that “for an organization that prides itself on class and success, the Yankees seem to have forgotten the ‘class’ part of that formula.”

The great winner, in all this, is soccer. Not only did everybody rally to back Garber and tell you to pick on somebody your own size (see above), but maybe, just maybe baseball fans will lose interest in an event that takes over four hours and costs hundreds of dollars (and that’s for the cheap seats) and check out something that is over in two hours and a fraction the cost. Of course, your comments that MLS is “not in the same time zone” as Major League Baseball in general and the New York Yankees in particular, is beyond question. Major League Baseball teams have payrolls literally 10 times the size of MLS clubs. Baseball is an American institution. Soccer is a foreign invention that appeals to immigrants, communists and young girls. Or something. Why point out the obvious?

But after looking at the events a little deeper, a different reality emerges: your comments were a coolly-calculated move to help soccer at your–and the Yankees’–expense. Mr. Levine, you are a soccer fan. Not only that, your love of the game runs so deep that you are willing to sacrifice the public perception of yourself and of your employer to advance its cause. That you dressed this up as an ignorant comment may have fooled most of the U.S. press, including institutions such as The Sporting News. But it didn’t fool us.

For one, Garber never mentioned the Yankees by name! All he said was “it’s incomprehensible that you watch a game, and there will be front-row seats empty.” We have searched at great length for the full text of Garber’s April 22 speech to the MLS Board of Governors, in an attempt to put those words into context. Having come up empty (and if anybody has the full speech, please let us know or post it in the comments) we are left with a general statement that just as easily could have been about any MLS team other than Seattle. Or, for that matter, any event (not just sporting events) where there are empty seats.

Only later (after Levine’s statement) did Garber “admit” his comment was about the Yankees, though he also said they “were part of a larger assertion that all businesses — even the most successful sports entities — are experiencing some impact from the economic downturn.” He then blew some smoke up the Yankees’ arse, calling them “one of the world’s strongest brands,” before reiterating that his comments were about the economic challenges “we are all facing.”

Cryptic? You bet. Which is exactly what you need to be when covering up a larger truth. In this instance, the truth is that you and Mr. Garber likely made an arrangement to make these “public” comments about each other, hiding behind a general statement Garber may (or may not. We don’t know who was there or if it even happened) have said at the MLS meeting. By keeping the original statement general and out of the public domain, you guarantee nobody will ever know exactly what happened.

Which is entirely secondary at this point. The larger truth, that you are willing to sacrifice your public image solely to advance the sport of soccer in this country, is one that has not been lost on us. And for this, we are forever grateful.

Thank you again for your efforts.

Sincerely,
AmericanSoccerNews.net