PALO ALTO, Calif. - All of a sudden, they realized that they couldn't wear their USA gear in public anymore. They realized that strangers could match their faces with their names. That they have to check into hotels under aliases. That they can't shake every hand, sign every autograph. Not any more. ''From what I gather,'' keeper Briana Scurry says, ''we're pretty huge.''
Before the World Cup began two weekends ago, the US women's soccer team was still getting mistaken for a high school volleyball squad. Now, the president comes to the locker room for postgame congrats. David Letterman calls them `Babe City' and has defender/sex symbol Brandi Chastain on for late night chitchat. Hundreds of ''ponytailed hooligans'' turn up screeching for them at practices in suburban hideaways. Every stadium they appear in draws NFL-sized crowds. And every game they play is on live and coast-to-coast.
''We had a lot of attention paid to us after we won the Olympics,'' says midfielder Julie Foudy. ''But for all this to happen so suddenly - that's the most amazing thing.''
The Babes of Summer (even the team's Moms don't mind being called that) have become America's instant heartthrobs. Who hasn't seen the Nike ads (`I will take two fillings.')? Who doesn't know Mia-Mia-Mia's number? Who isn't tuning in to ESPN for at least a glimpse? Who doesn't know they're playing Brazil here today?
The Babes sold out Giants Stadium (78,972) for their opener with Denmark. Only the Pope drew more. They sold out Soldier Field (65,080) in Chicago for a Thursday night mismatch with the Nigerians. They drew more than 50,000 to Foxboro Stadium on a steamy Sunday night for an all-but-meaningless date with the North Koreans. They attracted so many fans to Jack Kent Cooke Stadium for Thursday night's quarterfinal with Germany that traffic was backed up for 20 miles on the Beltway.
This afternoon more than 60,000 are expected to attend the semifinal in Stanford Stadium and 70,000 have already bought tickets for Saturday's final in the Rose Bowl, anticipating that the US will be playing.
Some of the white-heat attraction, undoubtedly, stems from America's fascination with the Big Event that comes around once in a lifetime. Some comes from the recent explosion of interest in female spectator sports, from figure skating to gymnastics to basketball to tennis to soccer. And some because the home team (unlike the US males in 1994) is supposed to win.
Still, not since hockey's Boys of Winter in 1980 has America taken a team to its heart the way it has this one. And except for one major difference (the Boys were huge underdogs, the Babes are decisive favorites), the attractions are similar.
The women are unselfish, enthusiastic, and next-door approachable. They're playing the game more for love than money. They get a lump in their throats when they hear the anthem. And they kick butt.
''They don't try to be everybody's homecoming queens,'' says Tony DiCicco, who has coached the squad for half a dozen years. ''They just want to play as hard as they can and support each other and win gold medals.''
In a time when American sports are most notable for strikes and lockouts, for holdouts and arbitrations, for lawsuits and felony charges and for salary caps and draftees demanding eight-figure contracts, the Babes of Summer come across as unspoiled throwbacks to an unjaded time.
''One of the biggest things about this team is that it's seen as a team,'' says Foudy. ''That's what attracts people to us. We're just a team that works well together and believes in that unity and that trust and that love.''
Half a dozen of them have been playing together for a decade. Most of them won Olympic gold medals three years ago and are sticking around for another chance in Sydney next summer. They've sat red-eyed next to each other on flights to China, to Portugal, to Brazil, to Australia, to Haiti. They've sweated out endless two-a-days in Florida camps. They kill each other in practice, hug each other after games.
''We genuinely like each other,'' says Scurry. ''It's real. What you see in the commercials is real. We live and die out there for each other. It's all about team. I WOULD take two fillings.''
Scurry and her teammates play for modest monthly stipends and for the $12,500 bonus they'll get if they win the Cup (if they lose today, they get zip). They make a point of taking a postgame lap, win or lose, to wave thanks to their face-painted fans. They sign programs, balls, jerseys, forearms until they get writer's cramp. They thank journalists for interviewing them. Because they remember when nobody did.
''There were days when we played in front of 100 people,'' says Mia Hamm. ''And we were thankful then and we are thankful now.''
The US women, who'd watched the men closely when they played host in 1994, figured that they'd become much more visible when their Cup was held here. ''It's just a matter of awareness, a matter of getting us out there,'' says Tiffeny Milbrett.
Still, they were unprepared for the tidal wave of interest that has swamped them during the past fortnight. ''Everyone always knew Mia,'' says Milbrett. ''But once the tournament started it was, can I please have your autograph - and can you write your number?''
Now Milbrett and Scurry and Chastain and Foudy and Michelle Akers and Kristine Lilly and the Moms (Joy Fawcett and Carla Overbeck) have become household faces, too. Soccer dads call their hotel rooms, asking them to come down to the lobby to meet their daughters. Ponytailed hooligans peek beneath toilet stalls. Fans stand five deep at practices, screeching for scribbles.
''It's not so much the numbers but the enthusiasm and the excitement,'' says Akers, who strained a shoulder last week high-fiving a fan. ''When I walked back onto the field in Chicago after halftime, the crowd was standing up and yelling my name and the breath was coming out of me. Because that's something you live for.''
When Akers scored her first goal for the team 14 years ago, US women's soccer was barely on the radar screen. The year after they won the 1991 World Cup (who knew? who cared?), they played only twice. When they won the 1996 Olympics, NBC didn't even show the match. Now Akers and her teammates are larger than live.
This is the dream, Foudy says. This is why the Americans came from behind twice to beat the Germans. This is why Fawcett, who scored the winning goal with her two daughters watching, wore her slogan shirt to the postgame press conference: WHAT WE NEED WE HAVE. AND WHAT WE GIVE IS EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT.
For the Babes of Summer, the dream has been to play the way they've always been playing and to win what they've won before. But, finally, to do it here - before more hands than they can shake.
