Your Voice All the Years

Daryl Grove and Taylor Rockwell launched the Total Soccer Show on public radio in 2009, transitioning soon to a podcast format, where over the years they created audio space for community and commentary around something they both deeply loved—soccer, the most important unimportant thing. The show quickly became known for bringing humor, politics, history, and humanity to discussions about the sport. Daryl and Taylor approached the topic of soccer from a place of empathetic imagination and deep research, and their voices earned the trust and affection of their many listeners. It was clear how much the two loved each other; it was clear how much the conversations meant. In early 2019, Daryl received a cancer diagnosis, and he sadly passed away on October 22, 2020. This is the letter I emailed to Daryl and Taylor three days before he died, trying to tell him, too late, how much his voice meant.

Taylor still runs Total Soccer Show with a host of intelligent and charming others. The show remains the kind of voices I search for and rely on.

October 19, 2020
11:05 p.m.
York, Pennsylvania

Dear Daryl,

We have never met. I am one of your many listeners and fans. I would much rather buy you a beer or coffee than write you a letter under such circumstances. But such are the times, as we have all been saying in 2020. And here's more sad news we can't believe. I wanted to say these things while I could. Hopefully, maybe, there is still a beer or coffee we might share in the future: I'll buy.

I started listening to the Total Soccer Show sometime during the years I fell in love with soccer. And falling in love with soccer happened at the same time I fell in love with my daughter, Z.

Just three months old, I held Z. in my arms every day the summer my wife went back to work after her all too brief maternity leave. We had recently moved to Pennsylvania, a state where we knew no one, in order to take on new jobs and build a family. Thanks to the time difference, the 2010 South African World Cup was on during the day that summer, so my baby daughter and I watched it all day, every day, as I rocked her in my arms in the living room. It gave our days a kind of structure and purpose. Alone in a house in a strange new state, we were also somehow part of the world. After the USMNT went out of the tournament, we rooted for David Villa and Spain and learned about tiki-taka. My daughter has continued to watch soccer with me over the decade, holding a little USA flag aloft chanting “USA, USA!” as the USWNT score again and again, or trying to figure out which colors were “our team” on any given Saturday (Gunners, Timbers Army).

Daryl, you and Taylor were with me all that decade. I can’t actually remember being a soccer fan without TSS. You two taught me what soccer was (quite literally, quite often, and still), along with the rich history and culture of the sport (by which I mean, community, friendship, challenge, and beauty). And you gave me—someone who has still never quite felt at home in the place we moved to—a sense of community. I cheered and complained with you about Tim Howard and FIFA and everything, and you, it felt, cheered and complained with me about Diego Valeri and Manchester City and everything, too.

You were both there for me when my wife ended our decade of marriage and during the separation and turmoil over the years that followed. Were there as I was passed over at work during this same time. When I sunk into a deep depression that I am still finding my way out of.

I don’t mean to become melodramatic, overshare as a stranger, but I wanted to put things in specific, personal terms, because during these very hard times in my life I could always lean on and count on you two. On you. Your voices were there, hardworking and passionate and kind and always so human. I could lean on your voice and on soccer and the community around it that you provided during those times when I found so little else to lean on.

Daryl, you are, over the air and as someone I’ve never met, one of the closest, most dependable friends I’ve had over the years. Odd as that sounds. And I just wanted to write and tell you how much I appreciate it. How you helped me during some lonely and hard times, and how you were there in some of my most joyful. I'm sorry it took me so long to say it. Like many, I'm working on doing better in this area.

Like writers and voices elsewhere in my life that have carried me—James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Shakespeare, Sappho—your intellect, grace, and humanity have lifted me when I’ve been down and helped create out of will a world. That’s what great writers, what humans do, weave the sensible from the senseless, order from chaos. What else is TSS. Something I can put on and feel shared sense of purpose, community, and everything that goes with it, as I help my daughter with homework, drive across town, slow cook black beans on the stove.

All to say, your voice has meant the world to me over the years. It still does. My daughters have grown up listening to your voice on the speaker. I look forward to a future with your voice and wit, look forward to sharing it with my students, friends, the people I love.

Thank you. Like so many great teachers and enthusiasts in life, thank you for building and continuing to build a better world out of love and loving. That your subject is soccer is always only a central hub of sorts, as it reaches always out to everything (novels, movies, television, feminism, history, Virginia, England, writing, family, Taylor, listeners, activism, and etc. and etc.). Your curiosity and passion seem endless, a gift you bestow on us all. We will try—I will try—to continue to deserve it, like everything that makes the world so much better.

That's it. Hopefully this can be filed away as another of your many much-deserved letters and notes like this one, and maybe sometime, someday, a fan can still buy you that coffee or beer.

Much love to you, to your wife, Shannon, and to your family and Taylor during this difficult time. You are missed on the air. And well loved and admired off of it.

Yours in humility, thanks, and always in soccer—

Travis