Johannesburg. -- It was a Saturday morning 28 years ago. The other members of my family were scurrying about getting ready for an overnight trip. The younger son was not doing his share because I was transfixed in front of the television, which was showing, for the first time in the United States, a World Cup final on the same day it was played.

Three years before, I had been introduced to soccer at school, and it immediately became a favorite sport. But I had never seen it played on this level, with such skill, such grace, such power. And such drama.

It turned out I was watching one of the classic World Cup finals -- England's overtime struggle with Germany at London's Wembley Stadium. Germany tied it up in the final seconds, but the British scored twice -- the first goal still controversial -- in the 30 minutes of extra time.

I was hooked, not just on soccer, but on the World Cup, an amazing sports extravaganza rivaled only by the Olympics in my book. In the years since, I have missed only one World Cup final, though they were not put back on broadcast television until 1982.

In 1970, after a Pele-led Brazilian squad outclassed Italy 4-1, I walked out of the closed-circuit telecast bleary-eyed into the bright sunshine of an Atlanta day. Next to the auditorium, delirious Brazilian fans had formed an impromptu conga line and danced in celebration.

Four years later -- and I reveal this reluctantly to my editors at The Sun -- I slipped out of the Annapolis Bureau in the afternoons and dashed over to Washington, where sleek diplomatic limos came to a seedy section of town to double-park outside the arena, bringing dark-suited men smoking strong tobacco to watch preliminary matches. In the final, a packed house saw a solid German team beat Johann Cruyff's exciting Dutch squad.

In 1982, it was the brilliance of Paolo Rossi and Italy; in '86 the magical Diego Maradona leading Argentina; in '90, the mistake-free Germans beating the cynical Argentines.

And so, a little over a year ago when I was offered the opportunity to take over The Sun's Johannesburg Bureau, I had to decide -- do I go watch South Africa transform itself into a democratic country, a history-making event that journalists usually only dream about witnessing? Or do I stay home and get to go to World Cup games?

Not an easy choice.

So here I am, 8,000 miles away, on this Sunday morning hoping that I haven't heard who won the USA-Switzerland game yesterday because South African television isn't showing it until this afternoon.

(Cup competition began Friday, and continues for a month at nine U.S. cities.)

It's frustrating, but at least I am in a country where soccer is recognized as a major sport, where there is widespread excitement about the World Cup. All the games will be televised, even if some are delayed.

Because Americans play sports that developed in isolation, we have little appreciation for the passions that develop when you follow a national team on an international quest, feelings that are raised even higher here because the country's teams are emerging from decades of their isolation.

Here, an entire country's pride was on the line two weeks ago as the South African rugby squad took on the British team that had humiliated them the week before. The South Africans prevailed.

A similar obsession took over when South Africa and Australia spent about three months playing each other in home-and-home series of cricket matches.

Like virtually everything in South Africa, this is affected by race. The Afrikaners play rugby, the English play cricket. The blacks play soccer. Actually, the soccer squad is one of the few truly integrated national teams. Though improving, it hasn't done that well since returning to the international scene. It just lost two 1-0 games in Australia. There's great skill, but the team needs more experience on the international level.

On Monday, a television set in a store window was showing a replay of the second Australia game. Some 50 people stood in front of the window watching. All were black.

From this distance, it is hard to judge how much my native country is appreciating the sports spectacle that is just beginning to unfold before them. Americans should know that much of the world is poking fun at them for their lack of knowledge of soccer and enthusiasm for the World Cup.

As for those Americans, many of them sports columnists, who wallow in their ignorance and take pride in their parochial tastes, to me they are the equivalent of people who walk into the Louvre and don't bother to look at the paintings, who go to Paris and hang out at a hamburger joint where they serve Budweiser.

The point is this -- even if you know nothing about soccer, don't be afraid to learn. Four billion people can't be wrong. This is a great game. Try it, you'll like it.

An Evening Sun sports columnist once wrote that Americans will never learn to like soccer because you can't use your hands. This struck me as a particularly absurd statement. It's like saying basketball would be better if you didn't have to dribble; or a hurdles race would be improved if the runners didn't have to jump over those barriers.

I think the point is that Americans have grown used to the precision of hands-on sports and, by contrast, soccer looks sloppy. But it is just this imprecision that helps to give soccer its flow, its unpredictability. It becomes a sport governed not just by the people who play it, but by the ball itself that so often stubbornly resists control even by the most skilled feet.

Then, when a player comes along who can move the ball around the field with his feet the way Rod Laver could move a tennis ball around a court with his racket, it seems like magic happening before your eyes.

At its best, soccer is a game that flows almost seamlessly. This undoubtedly contributes to the intense emotions associated with the various riots, even a small war between El Salvador and Honduras. Almost every other sport gives spectators a chance to sit down and collect themselves, between plays, pitches, points, whatever. But soccer just keeps going and going and going, your excitement, frustration, energy, building and building and building until -- IT'S A GOAL! WHAT? THEY CALLED OFFSIDE!!?? I'M GOING TO KILL THAT REF!!!!

So, above all, if you are a newcomer to this sport, just try to get into the flow of the game.

From there, you can learn to appreciate the players. On every good team, there's a quarterback, somebody who usually doesn't score many goals, as a quarterback doesn't score many touchdowns, but who makes things happen with his passing from the midfield.

There are the speedy wide receiver equivalents who can make --ing individual runs and, if fed the ball at the right time by the quarterback, score goals. And then there are the pure goal scorers, soccer's equivalent of a no-field, many-strike-outs, home run hitter. Sometimes these guys couldn't dribble around an 8-year-old, so they rarely touch the ball during the game. But when they do, it often ends up in the back of the net. Call it instinct, a nose for the goal line, whatever. They score goals.

The lack of goals -- another factor cited in America's apathy -- is a problem that even the sport's honchos recognize. Soccer is in a similar position to professional football when zone defenses first came in, stifling the passing game. Since the '60s, when Brazil first perfected the short passing game now used by most top teams, defenses have learned how to collapse on their goal, clogging up the middle, making scoring a rarity.

Add to that the ill-advised penalty-kick shootout method of resolving ties, and you have teams, like Argentina four years ago, that play for a scoreless draw and hope for luck in the shootout. Even though soccer is a game of simplicity, of very few rules, its governing bodies will probably eventually have to what the football ruling bodies did and make some rule changes to try to open things up a bit.

For now, appreciate that because there are so few goals, each one has the emotional wallop of a home run in the bottom of the ninth.

So, America, even if many of your citizens don't realize it, you are a lucky place today. Perhaps the world's greatest athletes, playing the globe's most popular sport, have come to your shores to display their unparalleled artistry.

This expatriate is just one of the billions who stand many miles away in envy.

Michael Hill is The Baltimore Sun's correspondent in South Africa.