THERE'S A WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS TO EXPLORE THIS YEAR.

Byline: KEVIN MODESIT

CARSON - In 2006, ich bin ein Berliner, as JFK said long ago in a slightly different context.

Soccer's World Cup will hold its final in July in Berlin, and I'm determined to get in the spirit, a plan that became more palatable when I watched the United States stomp Norway 5-0 on Sunday at Home Depot Center.

Ich bin ein Turiner, since the Winter Olympics start in a week and a half in Turin or Torino, or whatever we're supposed to call that town in Italy.

Ich bin ein San Juaner, too, what with Puerto Rico being one of the hosts of the World Baseball Classic in March.

I'm the American sports fan. Normally I don't care much for non-American sports. Typically, I don't have much need for international competitions such as the World Cup, not if there's an NBA first-round playoff game on TV at the same time.

But this could be the year I get with the international program and see what the rest of the globe loves about these clashes of sporting culture.

It dawned on me, as I watched Taylor Twellman score a hat trick for the United States on Sunday, that for Americans it's going to be the biggest year ever in international sports.

It's a World Cup year, the tournament starting June 9, and Team USA is likely to begin as one of the world's top-10 teams in an admittedly unreliable set of rankings.

It's a Winter Olympics year, the games beginning Feb. 10 with the names Michelle Kwan, Bode Miller and Apolo Anton Ohno familiar to most of us.

And, in between, the crucial new element.

It's a World Baseball Classic year for the first time, the first pitch due March 6 in the first international competition to feature major-league players.

The baseball tournament, the closest thing to a World Cup for our national pastime, makes the United States an exporter of international sports for once instead of just a wary importer.

Could it be that watching the best in baseball play for national honor will help us Americans to appreciate the beauty of watching the best in soccer play for national honor?

``That's what we hope,'' said Eddie Pope, the 32-year-old defender who scored the third goal for the incomplete U.S. team that beat an incomplete Norway team in a friendly match in front of 16,366 fans in Carson. ``With baseball going international, that'll help the World Cup.''

Pope was signing autographs outside the locker room late Sunday afternoon and speaking hopefully about growing American awareness that team sports don't end with the NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup, the Super Bowl and the (so-called) World Series. Of course, he was aware that we're heading into Super Bowl week, that spring training is just around the corner, and that Kobe Bryant's 81 is inspiring a bit more chatter than Twellman's three.

``I think the (U.S.) basketball team getting beaten so badly opened people's eyes that there are other countries out there, and you can't really claim to be world champions unless you beat the rest of the world,'' Pope said. ``You win the Super Bowl, and you're the 'World Champions'? Not really.''

Add basketball's World Championships to this year's roster of international events that will grab our attention. They begin Aug. 19 in Japan, and the USA will be trying to bounce back from its bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics and sixth-place finish at the 2002 worlds.

For me, Couchpotatus Americanus, anticipation for the World Baseball Classic - some of which will be played in Anaheim and San Diego - is undercut by the uncomfortable feeling that some of the major leagues' best players will have their precious preparation for the season interrupted. Barry Bonds seems to share this feeling, having pulled out of participating for the U.S. team to save himself for the San Francisco Giants.

Welcome to Planet Earth, I suppose. The soccer world is used to the tug-of-war between national and club interests, part of the kilometer-long list of complexities of international play.

I'm determined to figure it all out. So my TV is set on Fox Soccer Channel these days, providing not only the up-to-the-minute (Greenwich Mean Time) news on soccer but also the latest on Pakistani cricket.

Online, courtesy of the British newspapers, I think I understand why England didn't give Sven-Goran Eriksson the sack for his bung-busters comment. Any day now I'll understand the sentence I just wrote.

Most years, an American can content himself or herself with the sports played on this fruited plain. The American League wild-card race is drama enough.

Not this year, a year with an Olympics and a World Cup and a World Baseball Classic. You tune out the world this year, you lose.

So I'm becoming a citizen of the sports world, intent on learning new languages of sport, open to all the games peoples play. As long as we win 5-0 every time, I think it's going to be kind of fun.

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