CabinWindow: American way

It was 51 years ago today that Pele's "beautiful game" resulted in a World Cup for Brazil, the country's first. OK. OK. World Cup, Pele we're talking soccer.

Despite the fact that it seems like every 7-year-old from California to Maine has to play the game by federal law, soccer is still not the phenomenon in the United States that it is elsewhere. Never has been. Probably won't ever be.

The World Cup comes to mind today because the United States mens' team earned its way into the Sunday final of the Confederation Cup. The U.S. team faced the mighty Brazilians after surprisingly upsetting Spain last week. And so we find ourselves on a bit of a soccer uptick.

We've seen them before.

Brandy Chastain's sports bra-baring episode in the 1999 women's World Cup is one of the United States' few highlights in soccer history.

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Men's soccer at the national level in the United States hasn't reached the lofty levels of the women's team. Indeed, the organization's Web site focuses more on its new logo than glories of the past.

The coup of the century, the latest savior for professional soccer in the country, David Beckham, has been a disaster from day one. His wife has been much more of interest to soccer fans and non-soccer fans alike than the blond European star.

It's unclear why we haven't embraced soccer as the rest of the world has. To be sure, our national pride radiates at sporting events. We take the Olympics as seriously as anyone and revel in our wins and despair at our losses.

Maybe the reason soccer hasn't supplanted football or basketball or even baseball is because it's not "our" sport. Those big three have been part of our fabric for generations. They are part of our national identity.

Beyond the big three professional sports, soccer doesn't come in fourth, or even fifth in our sports hierarchy.

College sports (football and basketball mainly) surely rank fourth on the list, and hockey probably comes in after that. And hockey only ranks fifth, despite having a major professional league based here, because it's more of a Canadian game than an American one.

Make no mistake, on any given weekend, more folks will watch figure staking or golf than will watch lots of other sports, soccer included, but watching differs from following wholeheartedly, which is what Americans do when it comes to Sunday afternoons of football and Christmas Day with the NBA and October for baseball playoffs.

The men's team fell to Brazil on Sunday, yet another in a long line of defeats on the world soccer stage. Unlike the Brazilians or the Spaniards, we don't anticipate World Cup wins or Confederation Cup wins or even packed stadiums in Los Angeles or New York.

No, we'll wait for two-a-days and preseason, batting practice and home run derbies.

That's the American way.