Soccer and baseball are what I do. And while I know there are some Boot Room readers out there who hate and bash baseball worse than any soccer hater/basher among my mainstream sports media brethren, I make no apologies for liking both the sport many consider the most American and the sport many consider the most un-American.

In fact, for years now, I've tried to tell people if two groups of sports fans in the United States should understand each other perfectly, they are baseball and soccer fans.

I know this, in part, because I've had to take up the side of both sports in so many bar room arguments, both here and abroad. I've told baseball fans who hate soccer that it's comical they can wax poetic about a sacrifice bunt but make fun of a soccer fan who waxes poetic over one-touch passing. I've told soccer fans who can name a dozen 1-0 games that rank as the most thrilling contests they've ever witnessed that they're off base to say baseball's boring. I've tried to create a bond between soccer and baseball fans, saying "acknowledge and appreciate the other fan's level of passion."

	Like it or not, soccer isn't going anywhere.

I've told stories of how I lived in Germany 15 years ago and how the breakfast table conversations between the father and son of my host family were the same as the back and forth in my household growing up. Only in the Bradley Family, we were talking about things like the Mets bullpen, while in the Grosse Familie, it was the VfL Bochum backline. In the evening, I went out to throw the ball around with my dad while Jorg, my then 12-year-old German "brother" went out and kicked the ball around with his dad.

Recently, during the World Cup, I threw all this stuff (my "A" material) at my friend Michael Kay on his radio show on ESPN Radio in New York. Michael was a good listener and didn't shoot my theories down -- but I don't think I convinced him.

But, you know what? It's no biggie.

If 6 3/4 years of Major League Soccer have convinced me of anything, it's that there is enough interest in soccer that the sport's growth is never, ever going to be stunted. Will soccer fans ever outnumber baseball fans in the U.S.? No way. But as sure as I can tell you another strike in Major League Baseball won't "kill" that sport, I can tell you that soccer is not going away. No way, no how.

So now, in addition to all my theories on why baseball and soccer fans should be kindred spirits, I can also throw in the kicker -- "Go ahead and hate soccer, but it's here to stay."

I type these thoughts today for a couple of reasons. First of all, this may be an inside joke, but was that Cliff Floyd to the Red Sox trade a deal MLS would be proud of, or what? The guy who was given the Marlins in exchange for the Expos trades his best hitter, Floyd, to the team he used to own that's now owned by the league, and that team then sends the player to the Red Sox, the team that's now owned by the guy who used to own the Marlins. The only thing missing was the Expos getting a little "salary relief" and "half an allocation."

The other thing that inspired this column was all the predictable storylines that came out of last Saturday's MLS All-Star game. One friend of mine Instant Messaged me the other day, writing, "The Gods are against MLS," because of the horrible weather that marred the game and, especially, the television coverage of the event. The always-fun message boards on www.bigsoccer.com have become overrun with too-serious discussions on "Is MLS capitalizing on the U.S. success in the World Cup?"

Sports Illustrated ran two letters in the front of the magazine recently, one shredding soccer in general and the other shredding MLS, in particular. I'd be willing to wager a good amount that the pro-soccer letters sent to SI far outnumbered the anti-soccer letters. I say this with confidence only because the ESPN The Magazine which featured DaMarcus Beasley, Landon Donovan and Clint Mathis on the cover was one of the best newsstand sellers in The Mag's four-plus year history and because my own e-mail box has been crushed with "keep the soccer coming" and "where's the Boot Room?" messages for the past six weeks.

So, perhaps we all need to take a deep breath. Relax and enjoy the game.

For example, if Beasley, Donovan and Mathis don't end up with big European paydays this year, don't get depressed. Those of us who've follwed the game for years like to refer to guys like Eric Wynalda, John Harkes and Tab Ramos as "pioneers." Well, American soccer players like our cover boys are pioneers, too, steadily pushing the game along.

Something we all probably need to accept is that the rest of the world is not quite ready for Americans to be good in soccer -- and, for now, this hurts our young players' chances of succeeding in places like England, Spain and Germany. There are contracts available for these guys (as Jovan Kirovkski has proved forever), but playing time is another issue. For every John O'Brien starting for Ajax in Holland and every Claudio Reyna starting for Sunderland in England there's a player like Frankie Hejduk, who barely gets a sniff of a game for Bayer Leverkusen in Germany. By now, you've all heard what Donovan's said of his experience in Germany. Basically, being American was a strike against him.

So, I say, let the pioneering spirit carry on in MLS. Let the U.S. go through another World Cup cycle like the last one, with players doing battle in places like Foxboro and Columbus. Let Bruce Arena, a coach who respects what's happening in MLS, carry on. Let him, in addition to coaching in another World Cup, coach the next Olympic team.

And, if by chance, baseball can't get its labor situation straightened out and the players go on strike again -- please don't say, "this is soccer's big chance."

Try to be understanding.

Jeff Bradley is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at jeff.bradley@espnmag.com.