New to Seattle, Kirk Trotman got a call at work the other day. Someone heard this unassuming family man played a little soccer. Trotman was asked to join a men's league team, and he accepted.
Chances are the person on the other end didn't fully understand who or what he just added to the roster.
Trotman, 34, doesn't flaunt the fact he once took the field in front of an overflow crowd of 76,000 in Argentina.
He doesn't run around telling everyone that he scored against Brazil's best, slapping in a deflected corner kick.
Or that he was a collegiate All-American and a professional player.
"I'm just going to have fun," Trotman said, before heading to his first game with his new team earlier this week. "I just want to play. I'm not going to showboat, by any means. I'm not about that."
However, if you want to see the real soccer animal in him -- providing he doesn't get a better offer and go elsewhere at the last minute -- all you have to do is stop by Trotman's apartment today, the one he shares with his wife, Natashia, and 4-year-old daughter, Kara. Say about 9 a.m.
That's when his native Trinidad and Tobago plays in the World Cup for the first time, challenging Sweden. Trotman will be in his full glory. It will be loud at his place, or wherever he is. He'll be the one doing cartwheels in front of the TV.
"This is once in a lifetime, this is a national holiday," he said, his voice rising as he considered this historic soccer match. "My country is going to be flipped upside down. When they qualified, there was three days of partying.
"To be truthful, I wish I was back in Trinidad."
Trotman visits his island homeland only once a year now, and in February he took his annual trip through this tiny Caribbean country seven miles off the Venezuelan coastline, enjoying the traditional Carnival celebration and reuniting with relatives.
From ages 17 through 19, this Trinidadian was a junior national team member, a right fullback, teaming with the great Dwight Yorke, who still plays for Trinidad when Yorke's not in uniform for England's Manchester United.
Trotman has competed on English soil himself, as well as in Portugal, Mexico, Guatemala and throughout South America. In 1990, he stepped awestruck into River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires overrun with rowdy fans and was part of a Trinidad junior team that lost 2-1. A year later, he got his lone national team goal against Brazil, one that led to a milestone 4-2 victory in Trinidad.
He parlayed his international success into a college scholarship at three different small American schools, winding up at the University of Mobile in Alabama. He appeared once in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championship game and twice in the semifinals. He was a two-time team captain, all-conference, all-district and a second-team All-American.
Trotman played for pay for the Lexington Bandits and New Orleans Gamblers before retiring in 1996. With his business management degree in hand, it was time for him to settle down and raise children. He obtained American citizenship in 1998.
For the past 10 years, Trotman has worked for Freeman Decorating, a national company that supplies convention needs. Five years ago, he bought a house, content to live in the South until Hurricane Katrina destroyed it.
His home near the New Orleans airport needed to be gutted, but it was fixable. Yet last October, Trotman moved everyone to Seattle. His colorful cousin, Jubal Lindsay, or Jube, lives in the city. Trotman was able to get a job transfer.
"If you sit in New Orleans and look at it, it hurts you more," he said. "I just didn't want to put my daughter through that whole experience. I felt it was my duty as a dad to get everyone into a better situation.
"It was easy for me to walk away. I'm not from New Orleans. I'm from the Caribbean."
Things couldn't be better. There's rain but no hurricanes in Seattle. Best of all, his homeland is in the World Cup for the first time, playing a minimum three games, and he's ready to follow every Trinidad and Tobago pass, header and deflection from half a world away. The only thing that could be better is if this had happened 15 years ago, when he was in his prime and could be personally involved.
"I would like to see us win a game, win all the games, but you have to be realistic," Trotman said. "Still, you never know what will happen when the whistle blows."