The Chosen One

Karic once got so mad at team captain Tim Tyma after the Crunch gave up a goal that he told Miller he wasn't playing anymore. Instead of sitting Karic, Miller told Tyma he was done for the game. "He said, 'What do you mean, I'm done?'" recalls Miller. "I said, 'Tyma, I need him more than I need you.' Then, I'm telling you, Zoran scored 13 points in the last seven minutes of the game. We ended up winning 21-14."

Marinaro was the counterweight to Karic's feisty exuberance. Quiet and modest, he was the personification of understated influence. "I've always been willing to help out if somebody asks, but I don't try and push myself on people," he says.

Instead, Marinaro let his play make his point. "Hector didn't go crazy [like Karic]," says Miller. "But it was similar for him. Those two had so much pride in their play. They dragged you, kicking and screaming, to a higher level. Anything lower than the best was unacceptable."

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The Boy Scouts blow. It's the middle of November, and the Crunch is playing the first-place Philadelphia Kixx. It is Boy Scout Night, and there are more than 2,500 blue shirts and bandannas running around the Convocation Center. Many have somehow gotten their hands on long, red plastic horns, the kind usually sold out of shopping carts along parade routes.

A low, guttural drone emanates from clumps of Scouts gathered throughout the upper deck, making it seem as though the game is being played amid mating caribou.

Welcome to the pageantry of professional indoor soccer.

The Crunch players don't appear to notice. Probably because they're comatose. That's how they start the game anyway, lost and lackadaisical. At the end of the first quarter, they're down, 2-0.

Then, less than two minutes into the second quarter, the Crunch awakens. Midfielder Brian Hinkey scores, tying the game. Two minutes later, John Ball scores on a tip-in. Another six minutes, and Philadelphia ties it up. And so it goes for the rest of the game, each side exchanging goals, neither dominating.

It will not be a great game for the Crunch or Marinaro. Cleveland loses 16-14. Marinaro ends up with two assists but no goals, numbers that are becoming increasingly common. For the first time in his career, he is putting up more assists than goals, setting up others rather than cashing in himself.

"It's something I'm actually enjoying," he says of his new role. "This team isn't as flashy; it's more workmanlike."

Yet there are still quiet moments of brilliance: a pass to a teammate, a shot that just misses. Tonight, like many nights, his skill isn't demonstrated during the few times he touches the ball; it's during the long stretches in between. Where he moves on the floor. How he seems to know where the ball is going before it gets there. How he doesn't seem to waste a run, a shot, a touch of the ball. All the stuff nobody notices.

"He does things every day in practice and in every game that very few if any of the guys on the team are ever going to do," says Crunch coach Mike Pilger.

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The greatest goal scorer in the history of indoor soccer will have this year and maybe next to engorge his numbers, to leave his mark and get on with his life. Though his contract runs through 2004, it's unlikely he will last that long. "You never know, but I don't think so," he says. "I turn 37 in a couple of weeks. I just don't see it happening."

It will be a curious adjustment, for both the Crunch and Marinaro. He has played here for so long, with such success, it will be hard to imagine the team without him. Whatever attention the Crunch gets is almost always spurred by interest in Marinaro. In some ways, he is bigger than the franchise. "Even when I was a player, my fans from my team would talk to me about Hector," says Rob, who played for teams in Chicago and Buffalo, as well as Cleveland. "They would ask me more about him than they did about me."

In Cleveland, he is the only connection much of the city has with the team. "If the news ever shows anything with the Crunch, his name is always mentioned," says Rob. "The names are almost synonymous with each other. Crunch and Marinaro. It's like they won't show highlights without showing Hector Marinaro."

Marinaro, too, will be starting a new life. Though he has long been indoor soccer's highest-paid player, Marinaro is not getting rich. A decent player in the MISL may make $30,000 a year. Few will ever make more than $50,000. "When I first got involved, kids would come and try out, guys with college degrees," says Miller. "I'd say, 'Kid, I'm going to do you a favor. You're cut. Go get a job, so you don't have to start your life at 34 like the rest of us.'"