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LOS ANGELES — Who knows what it will add up to when all is said and done, in dollars and cents and hearts and minds, David Beckham's pilgrimage to America.
Right now, it at least looks as if he'll be fit enough to play tomorrow night, when the Los Angeles Galaxy meet Chelsea in a friendly at the Home Depot Center in suburban Carson, his wonky left ankle healed enough for at least a cameo appearance. That's got to be a relief all around, given the enormous buildup to what figures to be a big event, and — in the narrow parameters of what will likely happen and not happen on the pitch — a not-so-big event.
Becks will trot out and look (in the photogenic sense) terrific. Chelsea will look like what they are, a world-class side on holiday. The Galaxy will look like what they are, a lousy team in a not bad, not elite league without grand pretensions. The stands and the press box will be full in a stadium that is about one-quarter the size of the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl.
This is a big week for Major League Soccer, with the all-star game last night, the announcement of a return to San Jose next season, the promise that two more teams will be added by 2010, with Vancouver (though, strangely, not Montreal) among the prospective sites.
The Beckham debut is the cherry on the sundae, and certainly in terms of television seconds and newspaper/web column inches, it has been covered to death. That can't in any way be bad for soccer in North America, though there are times, reading the sports press here and overseas, you'd have to wonder.
All of that skepticism, sneering and derision from two very different points of view, proves one thing at least: There's nothing more insular than the world of professional sport — or perhaps it's just the world of sports journalism, and its majority inhabitant, the fifty-ish white male.
In Europe, and especially in Britain, the snide comments began months ago, when Beckham was still an easy target after England's disappointing World Cup performance and his benching with Real Madrid.
The announcement of his signing with the Galaxy was treated as affirmation of his has-been status. He was retiring, quitting and abandoning real football for some shabby North American bastardization of the beautiful game that it was clear none of the obit writers had ever actually seen. You'd have thought Beckham was leaving to host a game show rather than continuing with his playing career at the age of 32. (In London's Sun tabloid yesterday, they kept it up, comparing the Galaxy lineup to "a pub side.")
When he worked his way back onto the starting 11 with Real and helped lead the team to an unexpected championship and when he was recalled by England and played well, it was a little more difficult to support the notion that Beckham was all washed up. So the move to America was recast as merely a pathetic cash grab, a way to earn still more millions in endorsement money and to restart wife Posh's pop-star career.
Meanwhile, a large element of the American sports press has made it clear they couldn't care less, that their image of the game hasn't evolved since the failure of the old North American Soccer League 30 years ago. They somehow missed the United States' success at the international level and in the World Cup, the development of a line of very good domestic players and the growing popularity of overseas football on television. Instead, ad nauseam, comes the suggestion that they just don't score enough goals in this sport to satisfy American tastes, and Beckham doesn't score many in any case (this from folks who've never once seen him play). All of those kids playing recreational soccer — well it never mattered before, and it doesn't matter now.
Plus, this is just an entertainment story — not a sports story.
Well it is, of course, though best of luck trying to split that hair in the modern world. Try drawing the line between "celebrity" and "sports celebrity" when you're talking about a Tiger Woods or LeBron James.
It's all showbiz when you boil it down, a ticket-selling business like any other, and in this vast metropolis where that's a big part of what makes things tick, they know when a star when they see one.
Beckham is going to make a little league just a little bit bigger and draw a few more folks to a game that millions here, far from the great football temples of Europe and South America, already understand and love. He'll sell a whole bunch of stuff, make a whole lot of money and take his kids to Disneyland.
What could be wrong with any of that?
