I Stumbled upon Soccer in the South

I didn't know what to expect from Birmingham, Alabama, when I arrived to cover the heavyweight title fight last week (won by Deontay Wilder via muddled KO -- a drilling of a minor contender after four rounds in which he boxed poorly).

I didn't anticipate finding a patch for a local soccer club -- the Birmingham Hammers -- in a bowl of keys in the apartment I was renting. I didn't know Birmingham had a club.

Apparently, they do: Founded four years ago, the team is comprised of talented locals and collegiate players (who don't receive money and retain their amateur eligibility) and is about to enter its second season in the country's fourth division -- the National Premier Soccer League.

That apartment I rented? Turns out, it's owned by a Hammers co-founder's girlfriend -- the co-founder is Morgan Copes, 31.

And so, in town for a fight, I wound up spending a day with a Southern soccer crew, including Copes -- a former college player who kinda resembles Andrew Garfield -- and fellow co-founder John Killian, 30 -- a lifelong fan of the beautiful game and particularly of Rangers in Scotland and the Crusaders of Belfast, Northern, Ireland, where he spent two years working in conflict resolution (yeah, the big Catholic-Protestant conflict; he was evacuated a few times due to car-bomb threats).

We cruised through the Magic City -- a nickname Birmingham acquired for the pace of its industrialization in the 19th century -- in Morgan's doorless, wind-nipped Jeep Wrangler, beginning in a two-month-old boutique food hall, where we waited on an endless line for gourmet waffles, and ending at a UAB-West Alabama soccer match, where the team's brain-trust, including its very German coach, Wulf, scouted players.

The following became clear: Birmingham, with its re-purposed art-deco buildings and bridges (including the stunning Alabama and Lyric theaters and the $66 million food hall in the defunct Pizitz department store), is what Detroit and Philly and so many other deindustrialized hubs are working to become: Youthful and Portlandish (though much work remains).

And a week before the kickoff of the MLS season, also: No, America isn't ready now, and may never be, for promotion and relegation between its soccer divisions, but even so, the top-down structure imposed upon the sport nationally in the run-up to the '94 World Cup (the US promised FIFA it would start a league if it became host) has likely been stretched to the limit, if not already-outgrown.

'Cause we have dudes on the ground everywhere now who want in on the beautiful game -- either because they once played it or they've seen firsthand the passion it can generate -- and they won't be denied.

Morgan picks me up wearing a sleek Hammers track jacket, gifts me a couple of Hammers tees (it's all gorgeous Adidas merch, and the club logo is based on the red "x" on the city flag -- the letter just has been turned into tools, to reflect the area's history of steel production) and we're off in his ride (the passenger seat has a four-point belt, lest you fall out).

He says he'd recommend I wear a jacket, but being from New York, I can probably take it. Minutes in, I realize I can't feel my hands -- damn circulation. I bring up Raynaud's disease, but the loud SUV isn't exactly conducive to a discussion of medicine, so I drop it.

He talks about how fantastic America is -- that he and his friend could decide one drunken night to create a team -- why shouldn't their locale, the biggest TV market without a major-4 sports franchise, host soccer? -- and then actually see the dream realized.

Whether that outcome is exclusive to America is debatable, but what isn't is the pride the city already takes in the creation, which draws about 600 people per home game, including the voluble supporters' group Magic City Brigade, which was founded by a UAB student in 2014 and like any good gathering of ultras, devises specific songs for each match.

The Hammers' title sponsor is BBVA Compass -- ironic considering Morgan's day job is at rival Regions Bank (everyone working for the club is a volunteer with a day job -- Killian works for the company that runs WorldSoccerShop.com).

Already, Morgan has received major encouragement from the fans, including a threesome of guys that have him almost choked up -- it was a little kid, his dad, and the dad's dad. They thanked him for bringing them together. They wouldn't be hanging out together without the Hammers.

We're still in the south, so the day begins at a chicken and waffle joint -- only one inside a stylish, Eataly-like mess hall featuring additional vendors of everything from poke bowls to pita bread.

Morgan and I meet Killian on line, and as we wait they greet little pockets of people drifting in and out of the place -- apparently, starting a soccer club nets you a good many friends (including the nearby bar's highly-touted mixologist).

After 30 minutes and much grumbling, we pick up our dishes and head into sun, where Forrest Collins, the founder of the supporter's group, and Collin and Kimberley Barnwell, two of its more avid members, are already relaxing in the sun.

Much talk ensues about legendary nights for the team -- especially victories over Memphis City and Nashville FC (the latter at Vanderbilt Stadium in the I-65 Cup, just before Nashville announced it was moving up a division, when down a goal, the Hammers came back to score two and win in what they now call the Miracle at Vandy).

I get a sense of the team's other rivals -- the New Orleans Jesters, Knoxville Force, Chattanooga FC.

And it's clear their rooting isn't all that different from my own for the second-tier New York Cosmos, who almost folded -- along with the NASL, in which they play -- this past winter.

I don't get to as many Cosmos games as I used to, but I was broken up about the team withering away, unable to pay its players, before new owner Rocco Commisso stepped in and saved the enterprise.

Of course, this iteration of the Cosmos was a far more modest enterprise than the one led by Pele, Chinaglia and Beckenbauer before 80,000 in Giants Stadium in the '70s. But in a way, the smallness of it made the rooting purer -- we were just 2,000 surrounding a crappy turf field at Hofstra all marked up with lacrosse lines.

But we twice beat NYCFC in the US Open Cup. We liked to think we were the soulful alternative to their Yankees and Man City-funded venture -- a team with an American soccer history now working to rise again. The Hammers recognize their own predecessor -- the Birmingham Grasshoppers, who fielded a team for five years in the 1990s.

Morgan, Killian and I bid a temporary farewell to Forrest and Collin -- there's a soccer game on this afternoon between rival local colleges, and we'll see them there.

We head to Pies & Pints, a fantastic southern pizza and brew chain where I house a kids'-sized pie, and they delve deeper into how this whole thing developed (Morgan drinks a Kentucky Bourbon barrel ale).

They were musing over double IPAs at a local brewery in 2013 -- one of the first in a wave of new Bham institutions. Killian wanted to hear from Morgan, who had played for the University of Mobile, their alma mater, what being on the pitch was like.

Meanwhile, he was already examining how certain fanbases came to be and the source of their traditions (particularly at rowdy and rhythmic South American venues).

They were aware then of a group in Indianapolis looking to build a team -- the Brickyard Battalion. That group's ultimate success gave them hope that perhaps their fascination could actually yield a team.

They began talking to everyone they knew, including designers who came up with a logo and scarves. That summer they held their first fundraiser -- selling 100 $25 scarves. They took that money and put it into t-shirts, which they sold. Then they held a viewing party for the 2013 MLS All-Star Game. At least 60 businesses donated gift certificates for them to raffle off.

Somehow, word of their efforts reached the offices of the USL -- America's third-tier soccer league. You can picture it, right? Young guys, an affordable city being everyday rediscovered further, the hip looking to channel genuine civic pride (Morgan came from Baton Rouge, La., but had lived in six states before sixth grade and was determined to stay in Bham, while Killian is a native).

Morgan, who has an MBA, got an idea of how much they'd need to enter the fourth tier, the NPSL, which was the realistic goal -- an initial fee of $10,000, plus an annual fee of 4k.

"It wasn't anything we saw as something that would ruin our lives if we tried and failed," he says. He and Killian took on an additional six owners to bear the financial burden.

They hosted two exhibition games between the second-tier Atlanta Silverbacks, the biggest team in the region at the time, and the UAB Blazers, in 2014 and 2015. In the first game, Eric Wynalda, a former national team player, was Atlanta's coach, and they drew 2,200. The next year they pulled 1,400 in the rain.

They held Champions League watch parties where they sold merch. Hocked stuff at a bar on St. Patrick's Day. They held an exhibition season in 2015 -- barnstorming like Bingo Long to play teams around the region.

At home, they played just outside of town at the SHAC (the Sicard Hollow Athletic Complex) in Hoover (they still hope to move downtown when a venue becomes available).

The college players wanted to join their side because the league helped them stay sharp in the summer (the NPSL has pro teams, so the Hammers often have an uphill battle to wage).

The team finally entered the league last year. Now, a marketing firm helps put it TV and in magazines. How high the soccer pyramid they can climb isn't a question that overly concerns them. They just want the club, as the city, to continue growing organically.

After pizza, we hit the UAB-West Alabama soccer match, where the Hammers front office and coaching staff is assembled -- not to mention players. One is wearing a leg brace over black jeans, trying to recover from an MCL injury, talking about his potential return to Morgan, clearly eager to get back on the pitch, sounding a little plaintive.

Wulf Koch, the gleaming, Van Pelt-chrome-domed, German coach asks Morgan if he saw the incredible show Bayern Munich put on today.

Morgan tells me to beware: Wulf loves poking fun at America. Then, eyes on the game, he unconsciously starts doing some play-by-play. "Ooh -- just nutted him. And him" (a nutmeg being the equivalent of going five hole through a defender in hockey).

At halftime, a guy in street clothes walks past the stands, and the Hammers supporters in attendance begin singing, "There's only one Karl Chester!" Morgan explains that this guy scored the first goal in Hammers history.

Morgan tells Wulf about a Senegalese track star who has been training in the area and played some soccer back in Africa.

Wulf turns to assistant coach Jeremy McLane. "Talked to a very, very good center forward today," he says.

"We need that," McLane says.

The sun is now cooking me -- and I have boxing work to do, so I bid the group farewell before the final whistle. I never intended to spend so much time with them (I wanted to check out the Barber Motorsports Museum, for one). But I am glad I have.

Birmingham isn't all good. The day I landed, the local newspaper featured a sporting goods catalog that literally advertised guns on the same printed page as girls' softball equipment.

I'm not saying gun-nuttery and soccer fandom are mutually exclusive passions (I hope they are, but I'm sure there's overlap).

Still, the first thing Morgan said to me holds: It is damn cool to live in any country where you can go out and start a team -- or in a city in which young people appreciate the architecture they've been bequeathed and are trying to re-inhabit it. Where they appreciate a game long considered un-Americn for its floppery and embrace it for its buoyancy and beauty.

That's the hip Birmingham I'll recall from my trip. And honestly, it's a place to which I'd like to return (#GoHammers).