Player
Although born in Scotland, Bain's father was a scout for the English club Bristol City. Bain signed with Bristol City in July 1974, but was unable to break into the first team. In 1976, Bristol loaned him to Brentford F.C. for the 1976-1977 season. In 1978, Bristol transferred two players, defender Brian McNeill and John Bain to the Portland Timbers of the North American Soccer League. Before moving to the United States and joining the Timbers, Bain played on Scotland's U-18 and U-21 teams. He would never return to play in Britain or for the Scottish national teams. During five seasons with the Timbers, Bain became one of the team's all time greatest players. He would go on to score 45 goals and assist on 55 others giving him the Timbers' record for career goals and assists. Additionally, he is in second place on the list of games played with 148. In addition to his outdoor success, Bain played in both the 1980-1981 and 1981-1982 NASL indoor seasons. In the 1980-1981 season, he scored 20 goals in 15 games. In the 1981-1982 NASL indoor season, his scoring pace dropped as he only bagged 8 goals in 18 games. The Timbers folded at the end of the 1982 outdoor season and the Seattle Sounders picked up Bain in the dispersal draft. He would play a single season with the Sounders, before they also folded. In 1984, he played with the Minnesota Strikers in the NASL’s last season. When the NASL collapsed in 1984, the Strikers moved to the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL). Bain played one season indoors with the Strikers, then moved to the Kansas City Comets, also of the MISL, for the next two seasons. In 1989, Bain returned to Portland as a player/coach for the new Portland Timbers of the Western Soccer League (WSL). This team had begun existence as F.C. Portland, but had reclaimed the name and heritage of the NASL Timbers for the 1989 season. Bain was selected to the league’s first team All Star list that year. In 1990, the WSL merged with the American Soccer League to form the American Professional Soccer League (APSL). Bain remained with the team as a player/coach. At the end of the season, the Timbers owner, Art Dixon, folded the team after losing $500,000 over two years.
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Famous quotes containing the word player:
“There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“That’s free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing—the truly democratic thing about it—is that you don’t even have to be a player to lose.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Abused as we abuse it at present, dramatic art is in no sense cathartic; it is merely a form of emotional masturbation.... It is the rarest thing to find a player who has not had his character affected for the worse by the practice of his profession. Nobody can make a habit of self-exhibition, nobody can exploit his personality for the sake of exercising a kind of hypnotic power over others, and remain untouched by the process.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)