It’s so hot right now: A trip to a Marathón game in San Pedro Sula

The “regulars” at the game were warm and welcoming.

The tiniest yellow 4-door car in the world pulled up to my hotel. I walked quickly out of the lobby, doing my best to act like I was not carrying $50 worth of cash (about 1,000 Lempiras). After we had crammed in the two gringo stadium “regulars,” the Amarillo Lightning sped down the street to toward the stadium.

We were headed to Estadio Yankel Rosenthal — the newest, smallest and least equipped in the city, located in the middle of a neighborhood in San Pedro Sula, which holds the prestigious title of most violent city in the world. Yards of rebar protrude from the top of existing concrete pillars like a box of foam noodle pool toys, baking in the 95 degree weather augmented by the 90 percent humidity. There are no lights yet at the stadium, which I’m told is still a work in progress. The yards of protruding rebar coming out of the top support that theory, though fans are skeptical about exactly what the timeline is for any further renovations.

I bought a green and red jersey of the home team, Marathón, both because I like being a fan and also to blend-in. Being a fan of the home team is probably a wise decision here when it comes to my personal security as well.

The driver of the yellow minicar, who wears a Mets hat and must be one of the few baseball fans in Honduras, drops us a few blocks from the stadium. Since it’s in a neighborhood, there are no parking lots and people are filing down nearly every street toward the stadium.

“See that crossed out tag over there,” said one of the American nationals I went to the game with, pointing to some graffiti on a bridge. He has lived in Honduras for about a year and a half and is a regular at the stadium. He knows just about every other person in our section of the stadium, including members of La Furiaverde, the fan group that supports Marathon. “That’s the tag of the fan club for España [the other professional soccer club in San Pedro Sula]. You’ll see more of them X’d out as we get closer to the stadium.”

La Furia is milling about outside the stadium as we approach. The Americans I am with greet them warmly. One of my fellow gringos even gets a belated happy birthday. Since the other team’s fans don’t really travel, there are no fan riots or violence to worry about on this day. Tickets to the game in the shade cost about $8. Instead, we get tickets in “El Sol” that cost $2.50 (50 Lempiras). Vida, the team Marathon is playing, is not having a good year. For the bigger games, the El Sol tickets might go for as much as $4 or $5.

On the concrete bleachers inside the stadium, we move to the top, where there is an ever-so-slight breeze. “We don’t really sit down,” says Chad. I quickly learn why. In the direct sunlight, the bleachers themselves are probably 120 degrees, burning any butt that dare sit on them, no matter the thickness of shorts or, for the love of God, pants. To offset the bleacher burn, pieces of cardboard are sold along with refreshments. People use the cardboard both to sit on and to shade their faces and I didn’t blame them one bit.

Even up at the top of the bleachers, we could hear the players yelling at each other and the referee. The stands are close to the action, located right on the edge of the field with a huge fence to separate the players and fans. When La Furia entered, they decorated a corner of the bleachers with streaming, shade-producing green banners and signs proclaiming their love of Marathón. Once the decorations were up, the singing began, a drum beating for pretty much the rest of the game, helping the fans stay together in their rhythmic chants wafting over the sun-torched field.

In extreme heat, shade is good, but water is most-important. Water at the Estadio came in the form of a plastic bag filled with a half liter of water that you can buy for about 40 cents. To drink it, you bite a hole in the corner of the square shaped bag and pour/suck the water out. It’s what the players use on the field too and is popular at all levels of soccer in Honduras. I started my day with a water before the game and was sure I’d sweated it all out by the 10th minute.

Aside from the bags of water, other stadium fare I partook in were two Honduras beers (Port Royal, for the record) at about $1.50 each, and a plate of Honduran beef kebab with beans and veggies for about $2. Finally, I finished it all off with a cold pouch, similar to the on the water came in, but full of ice cream. Yummy. I skipped on the fried plantains, bananas, and hot dogs that many of the other 5,000 or so fans were partaking in. What I did cram in my belly was plenty and I considered it a small miracle that my stomach ache didn’t come on untili well after the game ended.

While the fans battled the heat in the bleachers, so did the players on the field. Marathon went up 1-0 in the second half on a nice cross from the wing. I turned to the Honduran man next to me and we exchanged a solid high-5. I yelled at the officials along with the crowd and cheered on the “Green Monster” (Marathón’s “mascot”) as Marathón looked like they had the game well in-hand.

Despite a penalty kick save by the Marathon keeper, Vida got the equalizer in the final 10 minutes on a blast from the edge of the penalty area into the upper corner that no keeper could have saved. A tie was a disappointing result for the home team that has hopes of winning the league championship, but on a day that I was happy as a fan to get out of there with no major sunburn or heat stroke, a tie somehow seemed fitting.

Walking out of the stadium and into the late afternoon heat on the San Pedro Sula streets, we once again found the tiny, yellow car that was our way home. Being a fan for a day allowed me into a part of Honduran life and culture I would have never been able to see. One of the things I like best about sports is the phenomenon of people from different places and backgrounds coming together to support something that is bigger than themselves. All it takes is a jersey and some knowledge of the game to gain some camaraderie with a group of people I otherwise don’t have much in common with. In my mind, a stadium or arena is really one of the only places that this can happen, whether you are in Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, or the most violent city in the world.

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