New State, New Sport

First: full disclosure. I'm going to write about sports. But don't tune out - this isn't going to be some team-bashing manifesto. (The Mariners are terrible underachievers. See? All done.) Moving on.

Second: I'm a hardcore baseball guy, born and raised. I've been a member of the Yankee faithful since a very young age (go ahead, get the jeering out of your system). I love the game and all the facets that make it great (history, strategy, elegance, etc.).

Third: I've never been much of a soccer fan. I didn't know much about it, except that the World Cup is played every few years and that I played in the local town league when I was 7 but quit because I really wasn't a fan of being repeatedly kicked in the shins for an hour every Sunday morning.

Fourth: Thanks to a new town and its new team, I've become quite a big fan of the world's game.

Enough with the list. The Seattle Sounders FC, the Emerald city's shiny new "football club", will be Major League Soccer's next expansion franchise to begin play, as part of the 2009 season. And when I read the initial announcement in the local paper for the first time, I was intrigued. I ran threw my entire knowledge of soccer. Let's see....I know the name Ronaldinho from the '06 World Cup...I saw replays of cheap NHL-esque hit the French guy put on the Italian guy to get ejected from the final...I know that you can't use your hands...David Beckham is pretty important, I think...Yeah, that's about it.

Then I hit the computer. ESPN's main website has a navigation bar at the top of its screen, and I clicked on "Soccer". Little did I know that it would be the beginning of something "beautiful" (Those who follow soccer will understand the reference...if not, read on, I won't make you scour the internet for it.). I made the quick and earth-shaking discovery that essenially EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY ON THE PLANET has its own league and most continents have multiple championships as well.

Europe has its UEFA championships (two large tournaments, Champions League and UEFA Cup and its upcoming national team-level Euro 2008 tournament), Africa has its own World Cup, and North and South America have their own championships as well.

And then there were the domestic leagues. The English Premier League. The German Bundesliga. The Italian Serie A. Mexico's Primera Division (links to page in Spanish). Japan's J-League. These leagues are part of the cultural DNA of these countries. But if soccer seems to be so popular everywhere else, why am I not seeing highlights on Sportcenter?

I discovered the Fox Soccer Channel hidden deep on my digital cable box and watched the movie "Once in a Lifetime" about the success of the New York Cosmos (does the name Pele ring a bell?) and the North American Soccer League in the 1970's. They sold out every seat in Giants Stadium in New Jersey. I've been there - selling out that place is nothing to sneeze at and requires you and 81,000 of your best friends. What happened?

Long story short, the popularity was short-lived and that league folded in the early '80s.

So what does this have to do with the Northwest, you ask? Glad you waited so patiently.

Turns out I made the discovery of "The Beautiful Game" at just the right time. America's Major League Soccer is a young league with a growing fan base and with it, growing popularity due to media coverage. I can now catch a few MLS games a week on TV, and the quality of play is really not that far behind European standards, although something tells me it wasn't always that way. And wouldn't you know it - Seattle has been granted a brand new expansion team, subsequently named (by an internet fan poll in which I voted) Seattle Sounders FC. It's got a nice, classic-sounding ring to it, and the name Sounders has some history - Seattle's team in the NASL was called the Sounders, and there seems to be a development league team that still plays that inherited the name. The best part? A new team in a new sport that I can cheer on from my new home in the Northwest. (I won't be ditching my Yankees for the M's anytime soon. Sorry.) It's a new tie to my new place. And I'm positively thrilled. The Sounders new web site has a countdown to opening day next March and I can hardly wait.

And now Sportcenter has a soccer highlight in its Daily Top 10 once or twice a week, in what must surely be the signals of a new popularity of American soccer. Important international matches (most of the late stages of the recent European Champions League) are televised live on ESPN2 and Fox Soccer Channel. Gatherings of local fans are gaining some steam, meeting at a local bar to watch the game with fellow football supporters. People have said that soccer is destined to be popular in America; it's no longer 'if' but 'when'. I hope that they were referring to now.

Go Sounders!