"How 'bout some sugar for Herc?"

There's some pretty good choices in the veritable cornucopia of story arcs to this year's MLS season. You've got Carlos Ruiz missing the All-Star game to open a Hooters in Guatemala, Chivas USA finding new definitions of the barrel bottom each week, the beautiful footage of ESPN's SkyCam doing its impression of a falling asteroid, an MLS "select" team sacrificed like mewling lambs in a 5-0 loss in Real Madrid's home opener; the list is long indeed.

But of course most of those stories ignore what happened on the field through most of the season. That's why for my money, the best on-field story this year is the rise of Herculez. After only playing 5 minutes in the 2003 season, Herculez Gomez was sent down through the bowels of USL division II, only to re-emerge as the LA Galaxy's clutch player. With Landon Donovan missing on national team duty for several games, it was Herculez who took up the slack, leading the Galaxy to a US Open Cup win, and almost single-handedly kept his team in the playoff run. Although he's been quiet through the playoffs, the Galaxy owe him the big bucks for making sure they had a chance at all. Heck, he deserves to make the big bucks for making keepers look like fools all season long. That's entertainment.

Which is why I'm doubly pleased to see that Bruce Arena has also been paying attention and gave Herc a callup for the US friendly against Scotland this Saturday. Only thing is, is that Herc's got this little MLS Championship to play on Sunday. Still, it's good to think that we can have some depth and variety up top with McBride, Donovan, Beasley, and Twellman.

On the eastern side, New England and Chicago decided to have a bar brawl in lieu of a conference championship, which is odd for New England, since they've been the team with the most attacking flair this year by far. Their specialties have always been threefold: 1) quick one-touch passing through the center that makes defenses look like they're standing around, 2) Noonan (or Ralston) crosses to Twellman for header goals (I swear, sometimes Taylor's feet don't even touch the ball all game), and 3) Shalrie Joseph being someone not to be fucked with. He may look like a coal mining Pippi Longstocking, but the man is solid. Let's take a look:

honk.

crunch.

hi freddy!

Again, a man to be fucked with, he shall not be. The Galaxy take on the Revolution for the United States MLS Cup Championship Title Soccer Game of 2005 on Sunday, 12:30 Pacific Time, broadcast live on ABC.