WHO'S FORCE-FEEDING?

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

Hear the fear in the reactionaries' voices as Manchester United plays to sold-out stadiums on its American tour this summer, the latest proof that soccer has gained its long-sought foothold in this country, that we live in a sports world without borders.

``Stop trying to force-feed us this game!'' radio sports-talk host Jim Rome (or the comic character he inhabited at the moment) said on his show this week. ``We don't like it!''

By ``we,'' Rome apparently meant the sports fans of the U.S. of A., as if we are unanimous about soccer or anything else in life.

Stop cramming soccer down our throats, demanded a letter-writer to Sports Illustrated after the magazine devoted precious pages to David Beckham a few weeks ago.

And similar gagging noises were emitted by a letter-writer to ESPN after the network profiled Beckham, taking valuable minutes away from coverage of the good old 'Merican sports.

Now, the British are coming to Los Angeles - Manchester United facing Mexico's Club America at the Coliseum this afternoon - and you can expect sports' Paul Reveres to ride through our streets decrying the invasion.

They will try to portray the ticket-buyers for the Manchester United match as the lunatic fringe of the sports-fan community, a slur supported to a point by soccer's history of unforgivable grandstand violence but inspired mostly by soccer-haters' intolerance.

Who are the crazy ones here?

It's not the people who enjoy a good game of soccer when it's offered to them.

It's the people like the Baptist minister a BBC News correspondent spotted at Manchester United's 4-0 victory over Scotland's Glasgow Celtic in Seattle on Tuesday holding a placard reading, ``Soccer nuts - Fornicators - Repent!''

The whole idea that soccer promoters and fans are trying to cram the favorite sport of the rest of the world down the collective throat of an unwilling American public has always been a puzzle.

I don't hear the same people complain that ``extreme'' sports are being crammed down their throats - or golf or ice hockey or auto racing or any of the sports that seem to have expanded their audiences over the past decade with the cooperation of the news media.

Why are some people here so afraid of soccer?

One reason, perhaps, is the misconception that because soccer dominates other nations' sports cultures, it has its sights on dominating ours and squeezing out football, baseball and basketball. Another is the misconception that soccer has to connect with the majority of Americans in order to be an economic success here. Another is the outdated notion that any of our dozen-plus familiar sports connects with a majority of Americans.

In truth, with the possible exception of pro football on Sunday afternoons, all of the nation's sports are cutting thin slices of the financial pie, and soccer is simply another one of those sports. There is no ``America's pastime'' anymore, not baseball, not anything.

Satellite television and the Internet give exposure to sports that once were ignored. ``SportsCenter'' broadens the palates of single-sport viewers. Immigration brings audiences for ``foreign'' sports to this country.

If it's an anti-immigrant instinct that fuels the anti-soccer passion, that's deplorable.

Especially when sports fans here are so willing to enjoy the benefits of the multiplying percentage of imports starring in ``American'' sports.

Baseball is better for its influx of foreign-born talent, which accounted for 27.8 percent of major-leaguers on 2003 opening-day rosters - and an astonishing 60 percent of the American League All-Star team's starting lineup (70 percent if you include New York-born but Puerto Rico-reared Edgar Martinez).

Basketball is better for welcoming players from Europe and Asia, who accounted for 27.6 percent of this year's first-round NBA draft choices and, in the persons of France's Tony Parker and Argentina's Emanuel Ginobili, 25.4 percent of the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs' playoff points.

Those native sports aren't much more American these days than Major League Soccer, in which foreign-born players account for 28.2 percent of the league's current rosters.

The soccer-haters in our midst, few but loud, have nothing to fear but paranoia itself.

Soccer is no threat to take over America and create newspaper sports pages in which all the scores are nil-nil.

But soccer isn't packing up and going home either. MLS reported a crowd average of 15,821 in 2002. If it never rises, that's a foothold, a healthy number of sports fans whose tastes can't be ignored.

If some people are uncomfortable with the fact that some of us like soccer enough to attend Manchester United vs. Club America today, their objection is noted.

I only wish they wouldn't cram it down our throats.

MANCHESTER UNITED vs. CLUB AMERICA

Time: 4 p.m. at the Coliseum, TV: Fox Sports World.

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Photo:

Unrepentant Manchester United fans Beth Ashcraft, left, and Jessica Jacobs cheer in Seattle.

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press