Blue collar effort brings a point home for San Jose

Back near the turn of the last century, poet Carl Sandburg dubbed Chicago the “City of the Big Shoulders” in an ode to the value of the chaotic, sometimes ugly effort it can take to get the job done. To us, it seems likely Sandburg would have approved of the effort put in by the Quakes last night in earning their draw with the Fire. It wasn’t particularly pretty — you’ve got to find the back of the net at least once to earn points for artistic merit — but it was tenacious and effective.

Every time a ball came loose, there was an Earthquake there challenging for it. Every time the Fire tried to mount an attack or make the final move that would send the ball into the San Jose goal, someone was there to stop it. You can’t say that about Chicago, a team that relied on both the crossbar and goal posts to aid their efforts.

Joe Cannon turned in a stellar performance, coming up with the big saves when he had to. Ramiro Corrales had his best game of the year, tirelessly chasing down the ball time and again to defuse the Fire attack and nearly scoring on a free kick. Even more than these individuals, though, San Jose’s dogged effort as a team pushed the Fire all over the field.

So, it’s appropriate that San Jose wore their home jerseys last night. Not because of their main color, black, but because they have a blue collar.

Here’s our directory of post-game stories:

- If you thought the Fire seemed to get frustrated easily last night, it could be because tensions were already running high within the team. In fact, the Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago’s Cuauhtemoc Blanco and Wilman Conde got into a fist fight after practice on Friday and had to be separated by their teammates. Funny — we thought all the smoke in the air was from the Lake County fire. Turns out it was Chicago’s team chemistry gone up in flames.

- Match reports are available from MLSnet.com (with video highlights and a post-game report, too), the Mercury News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Southtown Star.

- Speaking of the Fire, we couldn’t help but notice that Amazon’s special today is on Aerosmith’s Box of Fire, a 13-disc box set with over 120 songs from the band with Liv Tyler’s dad in it, priced at $54.99 — more than half off. (Your purchases from Amazon via the links on CLS help keep us going, so please excuse the commercial announcement.)