At the end of the day, I&#8217;m not exactly sure what we were supposed to get out of the whole David Beckham experience. He played in Kansas City for the first time on Saturday, and there was a nice crowd for the match, and there were quite a lot of kids out at Arrowhead, and there were Los Angeles Galaxy Beckham jerseys selling like Wii consoles, and there were about 25 mascots roaming the parking lot, including a few Star Wars characters who apparently had escaped from a convention.</p><p>It was a showcase day for soccer, and the showcase was built around David Beckham, Becks, the bend-it-like-husband of Posh Spice, the most famous soccer player in the world.</p><p>Beckham is even more than all that. He is also the latest soccer hero imported to help the world&#8217;s sport land in America. Over the years, those heroes have included Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff, Gordon Banks, Bobby Moore, Carlos Alberto and, of course, most of all, Pele. These are some of the best soccer players who ever lived, and they all played in America. This might be like exporting Greg Maddux, Derek Jeter, Pedro Martinez, Pudge Rodriguez and Barry Bonds to England in an effort to launch baseball. Of course, I suspect that probably wouldn&#8217;t work. After all, it didn&#8217;t work here.</p><p>Beckham does have something a little bit different from those guys. He&#8217;s more than just a great soccer player, the magician of the free kick, the guy who twice finished runner-up for world player of the year. He&#8217;s also a celebrity, a megastar, a rock star, a tabloid cover, he&#8217;s Barack Obama in a jersey, Sarah Palin in cleats, and if there&#8217;s one thing we can appreciate in America it is celebrity. And, all in all, people across the country have come out to see Beckham play. More than 25,000 went to watch him in Salt Lake City, more than 37,000 in Vancouver, almost 36,000 in Washington. In New York, Beckham drew about three times the normal crowd, same in New England, same in San Jose. And it was the same in Kansas City too.</p><p>And that&#8217;s great &#8230; for Beckham. But has it made soccer any more vibrant in America? That&#8217;s a whole other question.</p><p>&#8220;I think he has proven that he&#8217;s definitely a celebrity, and people are fascinated by him,&#8221; says Grant Wahl, a writer for <em>Sports Illustrated</em> who grew up in Kansas City and is working on a book about this Beckham season. &#8220;But I don&#8217;t think it has carried over to the rest of the league, no.&#8221;</p><p>Saturday was an odd experience. Kansas City won 2-0, and on the one hand, there was definitely a buzz about Beckham being in town. On the other, to be brutally honest, he was an utter and complete non-factor in the game. I don&#8217;t mean he didn&#8217;t score a goal or have an assist &#8212; <em>obviously</em> he did not do those things based on the shutout. I mean that if you were not making a specific effort to watch him, you would have had no idea that he played in the game. He did not make an interesting pass, take a reasonably dangerous shot or do anything else that would have caught your eye. I imagine everyone who spent the extra 10 bucks (plus 12 bucks for parking) to see Beckham play on Saturday probably had a similar conversation to this when they got home.</p><p>&#8220;So did you see Beckham?&#8221;</p><p>I did! I saw him!</p><p>&#8220;How did he play?&#8221;</p><p>I have absolutely no idea. But I got a good look at him on a corner kick.</p><p>Well, that is the danger of soccer. A great player can get lost in a way that a great basketball player or great baseball player or great quarterback cannot. You go see Albert Pujols play, you know you will get four at-bats. You go see Kobe Bryant play, you know you will see him score 20 or 30. But even the greatest soccer players in the world can get lost in the fog, especially if the game turns out to be brutal.