The latest turn in the David Beckham saga has left me with a new respect for Los Angeles soccer fans.
Upon his return to the Home Depot Center last night, Beckham was booed loudly--and met with several signs calling him a "fraud." A lot of members of the media will call the fans' behavior disrespectful and uncalled for. I'm just not one of them.
Beckham started to lose me two years ago, when he stiffed the media after a large group of us showed up to cover a game he played in after traveling all night. Here's part of what I wrote then, and it's even more true today:
Most of the fans and all of the media who show up at Home Depot Center are there to see Beckham. His bosses at AEG are paying him millions (some say hundreds of millions) to be not only the face of the Galaxy, but the face of the whole sport. He seemed to understand that at his hugely successful introductory press conference, when he said he was here to take the sport of soccer to "a new level."
But after the game....a game that he had traveled eight time zones in one day to play, making him THE story, Beckham went out the back door. He pulled a no comment on a night that he was the only guy any one was interested in hearing from. This is on the heels of his "false start." He caused a huge splash when he announced he was coming, sold a bunch of tickets, and then sat out with an ankle injury for a month. He's selling soccer on borrowed time.
I've been a sportscaster for 22 years, and there's one thing I can always spot: when a guy gets it. Beckham doesn't get it.
Beckham is a huge star overseas and doesn't have to sell the sport--they're already sold. Any really good player knows this about Europe...it's where you go to make millions and become a rock star. Being sent to America for these guys is like being sent to the minors--they not only don't want to be here, they consider it a demotion.
AEG rolled the dice and thought, "we can change that perception. If we pay this guy even more millions, he'll become Wayne Gretzky....the pied piper of our sport."
But Gretzky was smart enough to know that he was the story, not the hockey game. He never missed a chance to sell it. Same thing with Magic Johnson in basketball and Tommy Lasorda in baseball. These guys knew that part of their job was get people talking--about the game, about why it might be important to fly across the world to play twice in two days, about why their teams needed them. Most of all, they were all smart enough to know that if they didn't talk, people wouldn't care at all about the subject. They knew that television stations would stop caring and send their crews home. They knew that newspapers would move the story from page one to page nine.
David Beckham hasn't figured this out yet. And the more I think about his background, the fact that he doesn't need any more money and he doesn't want the attention, the only reasonable conclusion is that AEG might have picked the wrong guy.
What stinks about that is that Beckham was brilliant at that introductory press conference. He gave his bosses every indication that he was worth the extra money, and that he would be the face of the sport. He's perfect for that on paper, because unlike Gretzky, Magic and Lasorda...he has cross-over appeal. When he talks, gossip magazines and sports networks show up. So does Entertainment Tonight. It's a dream scenario that AEG is paying to help develop.
When he was introduced, he said he was coming to help grow soccer here. He stayed at the Home Depot Center and talked to any one would listen that he would try to take soccer to the "next level."
Last night, he did. He helped take it down a notch.
If he wants to to be paid just to play soccer, go back to Europe. If he wants to be the face of the sport, he can't go out the back door. Gretzky, Magic, Lasorda and countless other Hall of Famers never even knew a back door existed.
After I wrote that, I was secretly hoping that Beckham would change his tune. He does have a charisma about him that makes you want to watch him play. But he never changed his tune.
Grant Wahl (a very respected writer for Sports Illustrated) has a new book out, The Beckham Experiment. In that book, he outlines the real truth about what happened with the Galaxy, and why Beckham hasn't lived up to his end of the deal. Landon Donovan, the Galaxy's best player, is very outspoken and should be commended for his candor.
Beckham actually made things worse when he tried to get out of his Galaxy deal and stay in Milan. To fans in LA, that was an obvious snub that I'm sure Beckham thought wouldn't have any impact. But last night, the soccer fans joined together and told Beckham that he has a tired act.
For that, the fans should be proud of themselves--no matter what the media says.
The next move here belongs to Beckham. He can do what he did last night and say things like "you can't make everybody happy." Or he can actually try to make somebody--anybody--happy. He's still a big enough star that if he reached out to the city, we would all cover it from top to bottom. My guess is that every show in town--including mine--will ask Beckham to come on this week to give the fans his side of the story.
Anybody want to bet me that he doesn't come on, with anybody?
Right now, "The Beckham Experiment" is officially a disaster. Only he can can change the way it ends.
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