If 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, then 63 million soccer fans just might be onto something.
That's right, nearly 63 million people watched the final of the World Cup this past summer. Worldwide, soccer is king among sports, hands (and especially feet) down.
Yes, this is revenge for the soccer-bashing column.
Sure, baseball is America's pastime, but honestly, is anyone watching anymore?
Nowadays stickball is more like America's little red-headed stepchild.
The last five World Series rank as the five lowest watched on television.
Each game from last year's West Coast snore-fest averaged a length of 3 hours and 37 minutes!
And half of that isn't action.
You see the coach half-awake, five pitchers warming up, a utility infielder scratching himself and the steroid juiced-up first baseman chewing tobacco and attempting to scratch himself. But he no longer has the motor skills to do it.
Come on, can you honestly call 300-pound 6-foot-2 former strikeout king of the Tigers, Cecil 'Big Daddy' Fielder, an athlete?
Maybe baseball has other qualities, for the fans at least, that make viewing baseball live better than soccer. Wrong again.
Whoever says baseball is the only sport where you can catch a doubleheader under the stars and take a break to sing together should remove their blinders.
Many soccer teams compete in tournaments that have them play two to three games a day for an entire weekend. And as for playing under the stars?
No one plays under the stars.
A number of soccer games, especially big ones in Champions League and World Cup final games, are played at night under the lights.
I was one of 37,337 fans in attendance for the World Cup quarterfinal spectacular between the United States and Germany played out under the lights in beautiful Ulsan, South Korea.
Granted, singing "take me out to the ballgame" is great, but I'm betting most of the 25 or so people at a Tigers game are singing "take me out of the ball game."
Soccer fans don't pause once to sing a corny old song, they never shut up.
They chant, they sing, they yell and scream. And they use instruments, too: Samba drums, cow bells, whistles and where do you think thunder sticks started, man?
Baseball?
Soccer fans have been using thunder sticks for years.
Ha, the only thing baseball can start is a strike.
Sure, soccer fans can be violent, with rioting and hooligansim, but what "Real TV" and the American public don't realize, is that it's passion.
Brazilian superstar Pele actually stopped a war in Africa when he got both sides to play soccer with him.
All over the United States, the youth have begun to pick up the great spotted ball, and put down their stickball twigs and gloves. Soccer is growing, slowly and surely here, and like the tortoise, it will eventually win out.
Hopefully, while the U.S. Men's National Team enjoys its eruption onto the world class scene of soccer, finishing in the top eight teams in World Cup 2002 in South Korea and Japan, and the women already winning the inagural Women's World Cup in the United States in 2000, the rest of America can get excited about the world's greatest sport too.
Baseball can have its World Series, seventh-inning stretch, rally monkeys, All-star Game ties, peanuts and steroid-enhanced players.
I'd take the World Cup, club and country passion, pints of Guinness, lush green pitches, oranges at halftime, and the ultimate sport of endurance, speed, strength, coordination and athleticism.
I'll take soccer any day - or night.
Jonathan Malavolti is a State News intern who welcomes all comments, even those written in crayon by baseball enthusiasts. Reach him at malavol2@msu.edu.
