Floodlights lit the mist in glowing pyramids of moisture as the crowd collected in the damp cold stands. New fans, young and old, carried steamy cups of cocoa and paper plates of pizza with glistening discs of pepperoni, everyone trying to shake winter from their hair. The atmosphere was tight and wiry, anticipation carried by the beads of wet, everyone held in the same eager cloud. If Maine knows one thing, it’s how to bundle, and excitement warmed the marrow chill. It was the first day of spring and there was promise in the air. Maine’s new team, Portland Hearts of Pine, was taking the field for their first-ever game.
The opening minutes of the Open Cup game against CD Faialense, an amateur team from Cambridge, Massachusetts, were frantic, choppy, a fevered, glitzing pace. Both teams nervy on and off the ball — CD Faialense had nothing to lose and Hearts had much to prove. Possession shifted back and forth, rapid passes, thumping tackles, unease all around. What’s this going to be?
In the 17th minute, after a couple of thwarted efforts by other players, Portland’s Walter Varela put the ball in the net with a low shot to the corner, first goal of the first game, happy birthday Walter, who turned 28 that day. The gift of it. The gift! But who’s giving and who’s getting? Every goal’s a gift to the fans, that special-day feeling. Thank you, Varela, thank you! A gift to the team, a gift to Varela himself, and who gave it to him, what sparkling granter of birthday wishes waved its wand? Happy birthday everyone, here was the start of something.
Every ticking minute the creation of chemistry was taking place. Between the players. Between the coaches and the team. Between the fans and the men on the pitch. It was there to be felt, building, that crack and sizzle, that heated speeded feeling in the blood. The gift of it! The chemical magic of the new. After that first goal, the pace of the game settled into something sharp and confident. Same in the stands, where everyone’s an expert.
“No left foot, that’s my diagnosis.”
“The midfielder completely misjudged.”
“Now! Now! Just kick the damn thing!”
Now, now. Easy as that.
“You know they’re an amateur team, right?” asked the old man with the thick mustache in front of me in the stands, turning as I yelped in joy when CD Faialense made a break. I did know. The team got its start in the early 1970s, made up of a bunch of guys from the Azorean island of Faial. A volcano erupted there in 1957 and people hit the seas to escape to safety. Over 4000 landed in East Cambridge, and some of them kicked the ball around. The club won their first local amateur trophy in 1974 and have kept on kicking since.
I live where that team’s from, I told the man. And it’s hard to resist the underdog. All that glory on the line. The dream stuff. The birthday wish. Here we go.
He knew about it. He’d grown up in Chicago, had rooted for the White Sox all his life. His late wife was from Lewiston and they’d moved back a few years ago. “We need this,” he said. “We all need to get together and root for something,” he said.
There’s a forlorn feel to the main drag in Lewiston, the second most populous city in Maine, and it’s hard to find something to eat after 8:30 pm. And it’s a wounded place, too, recovering from a mass shooting in 2023 when a man with a gun killed 18 people, in a bowling alley, then at a bar, where a cornhole tournament for the deaf community was taking place.
We need this. We, Lewiston. We, Maine. We, all of us. In this moment of fracture and freefall. Something to root for. Something to rally behind. “To keep the world from spinning off its axis,” he said.
He talked about his daughter who played soccer to get in shape for lacrosse. He talked about her skill, her championships, and on he went. And I wanted to watch the game, but focused back because what he was talking about without saying the word was pride. What he was talking about was love.
Azaad Liadi scored eleven minutes after Varela. He’d score again, goal number three for the Hearts in the second half, blasting a rebound in after CDF goalkeeper Lucas Verge sprawled to block a direct free kick.
Somewhere in the thrill of it, a Hearts of Pine employee came smiling into the bleachers.
“I work in marketing!” she shouted up to the stands. “Hearts up! I’m going to take some photos!” And she made the sign with her hands to show us what we were meant to do.
The Hearts’ marketing is slick. It’s hitting all the notes. Earthy tones and talk of culture and community, talk of strength, unity, and hope, getting right the cadence of the captions on the photographs on Instagram. In these moments, one can’t ignore the commerce of it all, the dollars and the deals, the machinery of the till.And there’s the marketing team taking happy photos to splash across the socials.
But the old man’s standing and his hands are raised and his knuckles bulge in arthritic swell, the hands don’t make the heart, not quite, but you get the gist. And the eight-year-old girl with her dad makes heart hands and beams. And there’s the middle schooler with his hand-markered sign. And then, in the damp chill, the crystalled feeling around the heart dissolves, the thoughts of money and marketing ploys melt away, and the guys on the field play on, because underneath the carefully plotted public relations campaigns, there’s the wildness of the game, the raw unpredictability. All the wish and promise, all the spin and ricochet. No one knows what happens next. And then goal number four blasts in high off a rocketing free kick from Nathan Messer and despite the scoreline the Faialense crew plays with everything in them until the final whistle blows.
A new season starts. A game begins and ends, definitive, discrete, there and done, but all the old games live in this game, and this game lives in all the games to come. It does not end. The seasons collect, the ball spins on, and the players, tonight and always, play with a skull, passing it between their feet, defying death in their dance with it. The Hearts move the ball, move the skull, they move it with vigorous tenderness, that’s how they played, happy birthday, here we are, leaping to our feet, fists in the air, hearts thumping in our chests, the hearts we were born with, and in the 80th minute the hometown kid gets subbed in, the 20-year-old Khalid Hersi, the Lewiston native, the first Mainer to be signed to this new team, and the crowd is up and cheering loud.
And through the trees, through the mist, the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul looms illuminated, soft edged, aglow, the mystery and melancholy, the dark thing that settles next to the heart late at night, but for now, here on this winter-spring night when the damp reaches in and caresses the bones, here, here, the promise of a thaw, and the Hearts of Pine offer up the rare best gift. Something new to root for. Something new to love.
Nina MacLaughlin is a writer. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Find her on Instagram at @ninamaclaughlin.