There are those who will tell you that Harrison Shipp wasted four years while playing at Notre Dame. They'll tell you that he would've been better served signing up first thing with a football factory - who knows, maybe even our own little factory here in Chicago - honing his game, obsessively, day and night, working on bending a shot far-post after a wall pass, grinding on opening his hips and switching it wide.

But there are some players - and I would posit that Harry Shipp is one of them - whose primary contributions, past the simplest physical requirements, are mental: They broaden the play, sense the approach of runners not yet seen, or know in a moment that the presence of the destroyer here means that there's no cover in the hole there. For those few, perhaps, the repetitive demands of the training pitch, useful as they are in the control of the ball, need supplementing with a movement of Mozart, a view of Frank Lloyd Wright, or a few pages of García Márquez.

If Shipp is the argument for liberal arts in the football, then Saturday's 2-0 friendly win over DC United became one of the (very early, and still inconclusive) bits of evidence in favor. The Notre Dame graduate's sprightly follow of a Benji Joya post-knocker in the 48th gave the Fire the lead, and his clever, swashbuckling run through the left side of the penalty area set up Grant Ward for the second.

Grant that, as always, we should bear in mind the NSFW advice of Mr. Winston Wolf. Allow, also, that this was a preseason workout against a DC United bench that doesn't quite pass the sniff test. Still, Shipp managed a goal and an assist in 45 minutes of play. What's more, his every touch seemed purposeful, controlling tempo and space, alertly challenging but never foolhardy. After his promising first 30 minutes against college kids last weekend, a most tantalizing debut against MLS competition. We shall see, but it's exciting, no?

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