Photo: Via Jordan Morris’ Twitter account

We want to root for athletes who are like us.

What does “like us” tend to mean? Sometimes, it’s little more than that they grew up in the same place.

Just last weekend, John McCarthy made his debut for his hometown team; like 95 percent of the crowd, he grew up and had spent much of his life in and around Philadelphia. It was no wonder that the crowd backed him enthusiastically, giving him an enormous roar when his name was announced in the starting lineup and an even bigger one when the final whistle blew on his first victory. It was a beautiful day, punctuated by the postgame interview that quickly became legendary.

It’s more than just location, though. It’s personality, attitude, circumstance. Philadelphia loves athletes who are hard-nosed — just look at Aaron Rowand, who literally put his nose on the line for his team. New York loves athletes with an image as big as that city’s overlarge ego. Because they’re a team of ridiculous hipsters, the Seattle Seahawks are beloved in the Pacific Northwest. And so on and so forth.

We root for athletes who went to our colleges, who share our names, who make us think for one second that we could be them, that they represent us.

Sometimes, we even root for athletes who share our diseases.

A body that doesn’t listen

I have diabetes. Type 1, or “juvenile diabetes,” in case you’re curious. That’s the kind that you can’t control, the kind where one day you’re a perfectly healthy kid and the next day your pancreas attacks itself and your whole world changes.

I was diagnosed ten years ago, when I was thirteen. I was lucky, in a perverse sense, because my younger sister had been diagnosed with the same disease two years earlier. I knew what I was getting into; there’s no way she could have. I was lucky to have born in this era, an era when we’ve made tremendous progress in understanding this disease and developing innovative treatments. I consider myself lucky. I don’t want this article to be a sob story about me.

But what I will tell you is that diabetes completely screws with with your ability to play sports. In high school, I played soccer and tennis. When you’re diabetic, the effort of expending energy sends your blood sugar in wild directions. I’d lose focus, my head swimming and my hands shaking, as I tried to boot a ball forward from the backline or place a forehand right down the line. Even today, there are days when I go to the gym and can’t last five minutes before my plummeting blood sugar rudely informs me that my workout is over.

So I pay relentless attention to diabetic athletes. Part of it is that there are only so many of them — a friend once jokingly asked if diabetic athletes were my version of “famous Jewish sports legends” — and I can list most of them off the top of my head.

Jay Cutler. (Not my favorite example.) Adam Morrison. (Okay, that one’s not great either.) Brandon Morrow, Sam Fuld, Kris Freeman… that’s about it. Admit it, you had to google some of those guys.

The other reason I pay so much attention to them, though, is that I know it’s so hard. It’s hard to deal with, day in and day out. You can’t forget to check your blood sugar, to bring your supplies everywhere you go, to make sure you’re never more than two minutes away from some sugar.

Great athletes have to listen to their body every day. Great diabetic athletes have to listen to a body that has literally no interest in behaving.

“Anything is possible!”

I didn’t know before yesterday that Jordan Morris, the Stanford sophomore who exploded on to the U.S. National Team scene with an electrifying goal against Mexico, is diabetic. It’s not something you can see, and it’s certainly not something you predict. You can’t look at a person and say — yep, there’s a Type 1, right there.

Even before the goal, I thought Morris was playing a great game. His movement was smart throughout; his speed was spectacular. There are plenty of forwards in the U.S. player pool; there aren’t many forwards with his afterburners and calm confidence. It was a hugely encouraging performance on the biggest stage — that is, the biggest stage there is for a midweek friendly in April.

Only after the goal did I see, in between the millions of #dosacero tweets filling up my timeline, a tweet from Morris in December. A picture of a tattoo on his arm with the message “T1D” and this message from Morris:

“To all the young diabetics out there keep working hard and know that anything is possible! Dream big!  @JDRF”

I can’t fully put into words how important that message is, to the millions of Americans — far too many of them under the age of 20 — who struggle with diabetes, and will for their entire life.

It was said on the Fox broadcast last night that we build up American soccer players just to tear them down. And that’s true — it’s happened far too often. I can’t tell you, I won’t tell you, that Jordan Morris will go on to become the next great American striker. The odds are against him.

The beauty of sports, of young athletes and their wonderful promise, is that there is always hope. I’m going to pull for Jordan Morris, wherever his career goes. I’m going to pull for him because I love our national team and I want us to win the World Cup some day. If he succeeds, our team is more likely to.

But I’m also going to pull for him because, on the stage of international soccer, he represents me. He represents us, a community of millions who fight their body every day to do the things they love, whether it’s just going for a pleasant walk or scoring a goal in front of sixty thousand people.

And I’m hoping that the next soccer-loving nine-year-old to receive this life-changing diagnosis will have a hero to look up to.