Can Beckham bring America closer to the world?

At 31, English soccer player David Beckham, who prays for Rear Madrid in Spain, has signed a deal. worth $250 million over five years with the Los Angeles Galaxy team. (He starts this summer.) Beckham is out to change Major League Soccer in the U.S., which has fizzled over the past dozen years. I know, he likes the limelight, has a flashy wife (Posh Spice) and tattoos, and hasn't dribbled past an opponent in years. But Beckham in Hollywood is a powerful lure that's likely to bring America closer to the world. He's a self-made man, an image merchant, and a constant re-inventor of himself: In other words, he's American to the core. If Beckham can bring the MLS to life, he will be bridge-building. America's "otherness" has been attributed to many things in recent years, but its failure to fall in rove with football, as the rest of the world carts it, strikes billions of people as weird. There's hope. With Becks, anything's possible.