Forgive me for being a little excited, but my first Seattle Sounders game on Sunday afternoon was pretty sweet.

Final score: Sounders 3, Colorado Rapids 0.

I admit it: I had little knowledge of the team and the league as a whole before the opening whistle and only a little more working knowledge now.

That makes me a casual fan, and that’s a pretty common thing, I think, surrounding this ball club right now.

I saw a lot of people at Sunday’s game with the same  perplexed-yet-overjoyed look on their faces. The running thoughts: “Hey, this team doesn’t stink! Why are they in Seattle?” And, more to the point, “I could really get into this!”

After battling an attack of allergies that nearly kept me from making the trek, I made my way to Seattle with the wife and got to Quest Field with about 20 minutes before the start.



Already, several hundred of the record-breaking 32,526-plus fans were in the stadium, apparently checking out some of the highlights of U.S.-Brazil on the big screen. But when it came close to game time, they shut it down.

As Art Theil so adeptly penned in his post-game blog, “The rest of the world for the next two hours could fight for second place in the attention sweepstakes.” (www.seattlepi.com/thiel/407679_thiel29.html)

The Sounders certainly had mine. Going in, I had a love for soccer born from seven seasons playing youth soccer through age 12, but that passion for the sport waned when I dropped it to try baseball and, eventually, running and volleyball in my post-high school years.

I had been, to an extend, spoiled by great soccer when I finally came around to paying the sport more attention. It took the World Cup and occasional Euro Premier League match or national team exhibition match to pique my interest. Frankly, compared to that, American soccer was, and may still be, several tall steps below.

But you couldn’t tell me that Sunday. The Sounders looked every bit as tough as any team I’d seen on the tube, fighting for every ball, executing precision slide tackles, making deft passes and energizing a quite vociferous fan base.

And selling a ton of scarves and jerseys.

And making Quest Field the place to be this summer.

And converting casual fans to diehard fans by the thousands.

Fredy Montero converted a Nate Jaqua header into a 1-0 lead just 23 minutes in — the fans’ reaction was one of the loudest things I’ve ever heard in any sporting event, mainstream or otherwise.

The second loudest came a few minutes later when the Rapids’ Omar Cummings blew a penalty kick on a questionable handball late in the first half. Cummings hit the crossbar and the Sounders went into halftime with a 1-0 lead.

Quest Field had plenty of concessions open. I figured they might be toned down a bit with a smaller crowd (the Seahawks traditionally draw about 68,000 for each game) but they had plenty open. I paid $9.50 for a small personal pizza, and even though it was good, it wasn’t a $9.50 pizza. I would have been ok with overpaying at $7.50. Lame.

Patsene, my wife, got a hot dog, and for $5.50 it didn’t look like highway robbery. But the line for a coffee was so long we missed the opening few minutes of the second half and, in the process, a score by Jaqua. Oh well.

We settled into our seats for the second half. Frankly, I was awed by how INTO not just the game but also the sport these Seattle fans were. I couldn’t say there was a typical soccer fan here. I saw tons of little kids with mom and dad, nerdish-looking types with athletic-looking men and women (and those who looked like they used to be athletes and had, ahem, let themselves go, so to speak), high-profile types and youngsters my parents would call punks.

Yeah, this team may not bring about peace to the region but it their games can certainly act as a sort of melting pot. For a couple of hours, anyway.

The Sounders made it 3-0 at 68 minutes when Sebastien Le Toux found Montero, who deftly nudged it to a wide open Jaqua for his second score of the game.



The celebration, already in full swing, only got louder.

Jaqua was recently named the MLS player of the week for his efforts.

Soccer players do a cool thing when they leave the stadium: they thank the fans. Man, is that refreshing.

The whole experience was nearly perfect. It even had Patsene talking season tickets. If we lived closer to Seattle, maybe. Heck, we may just go ahead and try for tix in 2010.