Seattle soccer: A city drinks in Drew Carey's love of the game

With the wide-eyed, vaguely surprised look of a man who can't get over his good fortune, he scans the crowd.

"Drew," a woman says, pointing to a sea of fans lifting green-and-blue Sounders scarves to the sky. "Really beautiful!"

"Geez, I thought they'd be cool," he says, noting that to build unity every season ticket holder was given a scarf, the way it's done in Europe. "I mean, look at this. Wow."

There is one more stop before the stadium -- Occidental Park, to listen to one of his great loves, the team's marching band, 53 musicians strong. The rally, two blocks from the stadium, is a swelling sea of blue and green and part of the parade process.

A man approaches, his face painted in Sounders colors.

"Drew Carey, whoa," he says, speaking loud enough to be heard over the trumpets and trombones. "Ever thought of painting half of your face blue and half of your face green?"

"Uh, no," Carey deadpans. "If that's your thing, man, that's cool. Just keep coming to the games."

It was serendipity that led Carey to became a soccer fiend. As a teen, he knew of the North American Soccer League, which included the first incarnation of the Seattle Sounders. He also recalls adults saying that no one would get hurt playing the game, predicting it would be the next big thing. It wasn't. It did have a superstar, though: Brazil's Pele.

When the NASL folded in 1984, Carey felt no loss.

"It was just that league that had Pele and then went down in a heap," he says. "That's all I ever thought . . . that soccer in America equals failure."

By 2004, the comedian had his own fame thanks to his nine-year run on ABC with the sitcom "The Drew Carey Show." He took some time off and returned to a childhood love: sports photography.

To practice, he chose soccer because the sport received so little attention. He could go to a U.S. national team game, sit on the sidelines with his camera and nobody would notice. He did well enough that a wire service hired him to shoot the 2006 World Cup. That changed his life.

"A complete revelation," Carey says of World Cup play. "The sport all the parents tried to sell as not competitive . . . it was violent! Nothing but elbows and forearms. . . . Not competitive? Not tough? That's like if someone were going to tell you, 'Hey, you're going to make your living going up for rebounds against LeBron James, but don't worry, it's not going to be very physical. It's not going to hurt.' I was hooked!"