The health of a sport often leans heavily on its longevity. The longer a game is around, the deeper its roots penetrate the culture it inhabits, creating long lasting connections that transcend generations.
No American professional sports league exploded into massive popularity overnight. Baseball, with the added advantage of being the only professional sport in the country at the turn of the 20th Century, slowly assumed it's perch as America's pastime over the course of decades. The NBA, as recently as thirty years ago, was a marginal sport struggling for live national television exposure. Even the country's undisputed sports king, the NFL, needed years to become the ubiquitous giant it is today.
Each and every one of these leagues benefited from the passage of time. As more and more people fell in love with them, they passed their interest and passion to their children. Fathers and sons going to games together might be sappy and over-romanticized, but it plays a role in the continued relevance of a sport.
MLS is no different, and only fifteen years into its existence is only now beginning to see the results of transferred passion. Finally, though, Major League Soccer has an example of the legacy of the league in a player; Teal Bunbury, drafted fourth overall by the Kansas City Wizards, is the first son of a former MLS player to come into the league.
Teal's father, Alex, also played for the Wizards back in 1999 and 2000, the last two years of a career that took him to England and Portugal. This link, made all the better by the potential the younger Bunbury possesses (Teal won this year's Hermann Award, annually give to the best collegiate player in the country), represents on the field what MLS is also now beginning to see in the stands.
American sports fans are intimately familiar with similar father-son player combos in other sports. The Griffeys, the Hulls, the Mannings; these are the "first families" of sports on this continent, families that connect an older generation to a newer, serving as touchstones that cement the cultural bonds sports have to our lives.
Teal Bunbury may or may not be a great player in MLS, and the career of his father in the league is hardly on the level of Archie Manning or Ken Griffey, Sr. for both accomplishments or longevity; but as long as Major League Soccer doesn't fade away like so many other American competitions, the Bunburys will surely be the just the first of many families to span the MLS generations.
For more on the Bunburys, read Mike Woitalla's piece at Soccer America
