Whenever I come here, people back home are always giving me a hard time, saying, "Don't get too wild in Columbus, big guy," and stuff like that. Matter of fact, I just got an Instant Message (really) from a friend asking, "Did you party in Cowtown last night?" I'll share my response with you: "No, I didn't." If you need to know, after I left the game, I was famished so I hit the White Castle drive-thru -- now that's livin'.

I don't mind coming to Columbus, not one bit, because of Crew Stadium. My friend Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News once referred to CS as a "dump." He had never been here before. Well, Filip was in the house last night and, as I read the News this morning, I noticed he has lightened up. He's now calling Crew Stadium an "erector set."

Oh, well. I love CS and I will always love CS because it represents the first attempt to make MLS a "real" soccer league and not some "summer filler" for NFL stadiums. Could Crew Stadium be prettier? I guess. Could it be more intimate? Sure. But, for now, it's the one and only stadium in MLS that delivers everything the league needs. That would be atmosphere, a proper playing surface and revenue streams.

As for last night's atmosphere, it never ceases to amaze me how fans of U.S. rivals manage to show up wherever there's a game. When I went to watch the U.S. qualify for the Olympics in Hershey, Pa. (now that's a cow town), I followed a convoy of cars loaded with Hondurans into Hersheypark. And last night, while it was a pro-American crowd, there must have been 5,000 face-painted, flag-waving Costa Ricans in the stands.

Ran into some of them at White Castle, too, by the way.

Off to D.C. ... we'll catch up later.

Jeff

Jeff Bradley covers soccer for ESPN The Magazine. We're pretty sure he knows the lyrics to "Columbus Clippers, Ring Your Bell."