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Hands on hips. A scowl tattooed on his face. That’s the Jørgen Kristensen soccer fans remember. We sat in his lovely home on the outskirts of Køge, Denmark trying to persuade him to play along with a short humorous sketch for our documentary film about the Wichita Wings soccer team. The scowl returned.
Back in the early 1980s, the Wings marketing team produced 10 drinking glasses, each adorned with the face of a Wings star. As one of the team’s best players, Jørgen was an obvious choice. While filming his interview we spotted a dozen of those Jørgen glasses in the dining room cabinet. We asked him to take a glass out, gaze at it nostalgically and then walk out of frame. If there is such a thing as “wildly unenthusiastic” then that described his performance. Thus, the scene ended up being unintentional comedy.
Only one thing actually made him laugh: we told him we had come to Denmark to interview his ex-teammate, and 1980s indoor soccer superstar, Erik Rasmussen. The punchline? Two weeks before our trip, Rasmussen informed us that he wouldn’t be there. He would be departing for Sierra Leone a few days before our arrival in Denmark.
“No surprise…no surprise,” Jørgen said with a cackle.
Sierra Leone?
“When I went there the first time, I was like oh my God, this is a fantastic country. The nature is extremely beautiful and the people are so nice,” Rasmussen said.
The centerpiece of our Denmark trip was supposed to be interviewing Erik Rasmussen. Jørgen was important and necessary, but we were crestfallen at having missed Erik. My co-producer Tori Deatherage volunteered to fly to Sierra Leone to do the interview. She is a trooper, always up for an adventure, but none of us wanted to see her kidnapped by warlords. So, we waited till Erik had returned to Denmark and then paid for his plane ticket to Wichita. The wait was worth it.
Erik Rasmussen is an enigma chest-passed into a riddle, bicycle-kicked into a conundrum, headed into a mystery. No one is more polite, but few are regularly as late. Delivery on the pitch was guaranteed during the regular season, but less so in the playoffs. Few were blessed with the kind of physical gifts he brought to the game, but even fewer had his eclectic off-field interests. Not many professional athletes studied law before starting their pro sports career.
“I only studied law for half a year…because it was really boring. So, I came over here and played indoor soccer instead,” Rasmussen said.
Oh man, could he play. The Danish legal profession’s loss was the Wichita Wings’ gain. Kristensen and Wings coach Roy Turner scouted Rasmussen when he played for Danish top division’s Køge. Turner recounted hearing laughter throughout the stadium. It wasn’t halftime entertainment that caused the mirth; Rasmussen’s moves made fools of his opponents and the crowd couldn’t help but guffaw. Former teammate Terry Rowe said his highly unorthodox style made him virtually unplayable.
The stats are hard to dispute: 1987-88 Major Indoor Soccer League MVP; the record for most Wings goals in a season at 67; the same record for assists, at 57; more than 300 goals scored in his seven seasons with the Wings. He led Brøndby to the semifinals of the European Cup, beating several Bundesliga teams along the way. Then, there’s the devastating game tape: clip after clip of Rasmussen making people fall to the turf on his way to a goal.
“I was a good dribbler, very strong in man-on-man situations. Maybe top three or four in the league among players. If I had been a little bit more serious…I would have been even better,” Rasmussen said, when asked about his strengths on the pitch.
“Rasmussen said” doesn’t do this quote justice. Everything he says is understated and slightly matter of fact…bereft of bravado. He has just enough ego to know he has an ego. He knows he was one of the best, but his existence is not centered around that fact. Former Wings teammate Terry Nicholl said there was always something more going on in Rasmussen’s head than the other lads.
“It didn’t seem to me that playing was the No. 1 thought in his mind. I’d be thinking about doing a shift [on the pitch] and he’d be saying, ‘Did you know that there are more drug addicts in Baltimore than so-and-so?’” Nicholl said.
They say to be the best, you have to want it more than the other guy does. Unhealthy obsession with victory is a hallmark of great athletes. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Tom Brady…none of these guys seemed to spend much time thinking about social issues in America. They were too busy beating up on their teammates in practice. Despite the fact that Rasmussen often put experiencing pleasure and satisfying sociological curiosity over soccer, he was the best anyway.
“Terry is right in some ways. I wanted to succeed, and I wanted to be good, and I wanted the Wings to win. But at the same time, for me to feel like a human being, I needed to have more experiences than just playing soccer,” Rasmussen said.
Nicholl roomed with Rasmussen on the road. For the Englishman, a reasonable bedtime helped ensure a quality performance the next day. After dinner, he’d often retire to his room. Rasmussen did not. Sometimes he’d do the obvious star-athlete-with-a-healthy-per-diem thing and hit the bars before engaging in a bare-knuckle game of cards with the other lads. But often, his path diverged from the norm.
“Erik would go to museums and see the history of a town. He’d go by himself because nobody else was interested in museums and exhibits. But he was always brighter. He knew all about the world and philosophies of life,” Coach Turner said.
And he’d walk. Nicholl described Rasmussen’s calves as like rocks…rocks forged not just through soccer practice, but by miles of travel through every American city in the MISL.
“He didn’t want to just be the best soccer player in the MISL, which he was. That came easy to him. That was a stroll. I think he wanted to understand what happened in the great country of America,” Nicholl said.
Rasmussen believed that walking the slums of America helped him better understand the lives of the residents.
“I wanted to see how this society was. At the same time, it is very difficult to define America as one society, because it’s very divided,” Rasmussen said.
Road trips to play against Baltimore, San Diego, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, and Los Angeles provided Rasmussen ample opportunity for his research. His walks gave him perspective on America that a childhood in Denmark couldn’t provide.
“In Denmark, the society takes care of everybody. You don’t have extremely rich people either,” Rasmussen said.
Nicholl said that Rasmussen had a particular interest in the city of Baltimore, where he would play a season with the MISL’s Baltimore Blast later in his career. He was astonished by the disparity he’d encounter when walking the harbor front and suburban areas compared with the African American neighborhoods of east Baltimore.
“I spent quite a bit of time in the black ghettoes to try to understand how crazy America is as well. If you are in any of the big cities, drugs are a huge problem. I didn’t know how bad it was until I spent time in those areas. I was digging into that because it was fascinating to me to understand the dark side of America as well,” Rasmussen said.
Rasmussen’s curiosity led to a ride-along with police during his season with the Baltimore Blast in 1999 and 2000. It gave him an up-close look into the crack houses of Charm City’s east side. The experience both scared him and left him emotionally wounded at the poverty experienced by the residents. But his taste for danger in east Baltimore led to a potentially deadly encounter.
“There was a guy with a hood, and he came up with a gun to my side and said, ‘Give me your money or I’ll shoot you.’ So, I gave him my money. I thought it was the best solution,” Rasmussen said with a laugh.
Rasmussen’s brain might have been missing the sensor for personal safety. Or, if the warning bell did go off, his policy was to ignore it.
Road games in San Diego against the Sockers provided a warm clime for his walks. Coach Turner set only one rule: don’t go to Tijuana.
So he did.
(TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK)
Coming Next Week: Part 2/2 of The Contrarian Wizard of the Pitch…
Great memories! Erik was truly special on the pitch ⚽️