Baseball turns its lonely eyes to DiMaggio again

LIKE MOST people my age who entered adolescence between Italia 90 and USA 94, I depended on the fleeting sporting icons du jour to shine a light on the permanent sporting icons of the past.

Thanks to Ireland’s eccentric achievements at both tournaments, I got to read about Mario Kempes, Just Fontaine and Eusébio. That Orbis sticker album with Ruud Gullit and Chris Hughton on the front nourished my pre-YouTube mind with animated step-by-step recreations of Archie Gemmill in 1978, a teenage Pele in 1958 and that Gordon Banks save in 1970.

With all due respect to Jack Charlton et al, the thing I’m most grateful to them for was how they nudged me down a gilded corridor of football history. They helped me to discover the multi-talented 1974-78 Netherlands, the 1966 North Koreans, the 1950 USA win over England and the very fact that last night’s visitors to the Aviva Stadium, Uruguay, even existed, let alone hosted a World Cup. Twice.