Read Online Live Right and Find Happiness (Although Beer is Much Faster) by Dave Barry - Free Book Online

yellow jerseys worn by the Brazilian national soccer team. We saw them on everybody—men, women, children, babies, grandparents, store clerks, statues and literally dozens of dogs (Brazilians love dogs).
    Everyone says the Brazilians are “passionate” about soccer. This adjective is inadequate. It’s like saying the sun is “warm.” Many sports fans are passionate. Brazilians are on a different level entirely.
    Q. Can you illustrate this point using a particularly gruesome example that is not at all humorous?
    A. Yes, but I would prefer not to.
    Q. Oh, come on.
    A. All right, but remember, this was your idea:
    In June of 2013, a man named Otávio da Silva was refereeing an amateur soccer match in the northeastern Brazil city of Maranhão. A player named Josemir Santos Abreu committed what Otávio considered to be a foul, so Otávio showed him a red card (this is very bad; see explanation above), thereby ejecting him from the game.
    But Abreu refused to leave the field. The two got into a heated altercation, during which Abreu punched Otávio.
    Q. That isn’t so bad! There are plenty of times in American sports when a player and a referee get into . . .
    A. I’m not done. Otávio, upset about being punched, pulled a knife, and . . .
    Q. Wait . . . the REFEREE pulled a knife?
    A. That is correct: The referee in an
amateur soccer match
pulled a knife. He used it to stab Abreu in the chest. Abreu was taken to the hospital, but he died en route.
    Q. My God! That’s horrible!
    A. Wait. We haven’t gotten to the bad part yet.
    Q. What?
    A. According to a statement released by the Public Safety Department of the State of Maranhão (as reported by the Associated Press), friends and relatives of Abreu “rushed into the field, stoned the referee to death and quartered his body.”
    Q. They QUARTERED THE REFEREE?
    A. After stoning him to death, yes. And then . . .
    Q. THERE’S MORE??
    A. Unfortunately, yes. According to local news media, the crowd “also decapitated Silva and stuck his head on a stake in the middle of the field.”
    Q. Sweet Lord Jesus.
    A. Yes. It’s on YouTube.
    I want to stress, again, that I always felt perfectly safe when I was in Brazil, and that I found the Brazilian people to be uniformly friendly and welcoming. On any given day, there are probably hundreds, maybe even thousands, of games of soccer played in Brazil, and I’m sure that only a tiny percentage of them end with anybody being quartered. My point in recounting this awful and totally non-humorous incident—which, as you will recall, was your idea—is simply that when it comes to describing how the Brazilians feel about soccer, “passionate” does not get the job  done.
    During the World Cup, when the Brazilian team was playing, Rio essentially shut down. Most businesses closed; the streets emptied of traffic; the sidewalks were deserted. Every bar and restaurant had TVs tuned to the game, with yellow-shirted crowds spilling out onto the sidewalk. In our hotel, the desk clerks abandoned the desk and went into the bar to watch the game. When Brazil scored a goal, you heard fireworks all around, and a deep, thunderous rumbling roar, seemingly coming from everywhere, from the city itself. When the national team won, the streets flooded with people celebrating. In our neighborhood, the party went on all night; at dawn, people were still singing in the street outside our hotel. This was going on everywhere in Brazil, for every game. This is how big a deal soccer is to Brazilians; this is how proud they are of their team.
    Which makes it all the more impressive, the way they reacted when their team was eliminated in spectacularly humiliating fashion, getting obliterated by the Germans, 7–1—an unthinkable score for any World Cup semifinal, let alone one involving Brazil. The Brazilians didn’t riot, as some feared