A Day to Embrace a Team Full of Heroes

Once again, they gave us the shirts off their backs.

And what a marvelous and fitting gesture it was, Brandi Chastain ripping off her white jersey, throwing it into the air, then dancing into the arms of the largest crowd ever to watch a women’s sports event.

Once again, the U.S. women’s soccer team stripped athletics down to its barest passion.

And once again, we cheered like we never thought we could cheer, for ponytailed and earringed wonders we never dreamed would be giants, in a world that is changing with every kick.

The U.S women won soccer’s World Cup championship at the Rose Bowl with a 5-4 shootout victory over China after penalty kicks were required to settle what 120 minutes of scoreless soccer could not.

They won it when Chastain, after goalkeeper Briana Scurry blocked a shot from China’s Liu Ying, belted her penalty kick into the upper right-hand corner of the net past a diving Gao Hong.

Chastain stripped down to her shorts and sports bra before running into the arms of teammates. The roars from 90,185 fans seemed to shake the San Gabriel mountains. Glitter fell from the hot and muggy sky.

“I temporarily lost my mind,” Chastain said.

Didn’t we all?

It was a triumph of character from a group of women who spent the last month carrying the hopes of all women’s athletics on their thin shoulders, delightfully skipping under the weight.

It was also a triumph of a nation that may be finally starting to understand that courage and strength have nothing to do with gender, that heroes can come in all shapes and sizes and shades of lipstick.

“This was about more than the game, more than the day,” said Kristine Lilly, whose overtime head save of a shot by Fan Yunjie earned her the game’s most valuable player award. “It’s about female athletes. It’s about sports. It’s about everything.”

It was about thousands of moms showing up at the Rose Bowl with thousands of little girls proudly lacking in sugar and spice. Their hair was pulled back, their T-shirts were rolled up at the sleeves, their game faces were on as they swaggered the concourses of an event that unquestionably belonged to them.

“I hope every young kid left the stadium today saying, ‘I want to be there,’ ” U.S. star Mia Hamm said.

It was about thousands of dads showing up at the Rose Bowl with, believe it or not, thousands of young boys.

Who wore, believe it or not, Mia Hamm jerseys.

On Saturday, nobody accused anybody of throwing like a girl.

“They play hard, they’re like . . . guys,” said Sean Giroux, a 13-year-old Orange boy wrapped in an American flag and shouting for the USA as if he were shouting for the Angels.

“Mia Hamm, she’s awesome,” he said. “And Michelle Akers, she’s my thug.”

It was also about guys like Mike Nenadic, a 30-year-old accountant from Altadena, a former high school jock who dated the head cheerleader and thought female athletes were “big, bulky, ugly.”

Who would have guessed that one day he would show up at a women’s sports event with a flag painted on his face, a flag bandanna on his head, and USA written on his arms and chest?

“It’s amazing what’s happened between then and now,” he said as he walked among the hordes of painted people in the Rose Bowl concourses. “Everything has changed. I don’t think about women athletes like I used to. They’ve become, like, athletes.”

From the beginning Saturday, this was a different event.

The pregame ceremonies included the carrying of several giant flags onto the field . . . all by little girls. There were tunes sung by Jennifer Lopez with her female backups. The boards around the Rose Bowl field included advertisements for Gillette for Women and Sports Illustrated for Women.

Then the game began, and Akers dove frizzy-hair-first into those boards, and Hamm dribbled around three Chinese defenders like her TV commercial counterpart named Jordan, and you knew this was very different.

Did the absence of scoring in a mostly defensive game hurt the average fan’s perception of soccer? Certainly.

Is a five-person shootout a good way to decide what is the most important women’s team sports trophy in the world? Certainly not.

But was the ending pure American? What do you think?

Ten matches of one-on-one, woman-to-woman combat from 12 yards away, one winner, one loser, everybody holding their breath.

This was football’s Joe Montana needing one more touchdown. This was baseball’s Mark McGwire needing one more home run.

“I wish there had been some goals so the fans could better understand the excitement of our game,” U.S. Coach Tony DiCicco said. “But this was a storybook ending.”

Heck, in true American fashion, there was even a little cheating going on.

After both the U.S. and Chinese players connected on their first two penalty kicks, Scurry broke the rules before Liu’s kick by taking a couple of steps forward before the ball was struck.

This gave her the angle she needed to knock the shot wide right, after which she sprinted toward the crowd pumping her fist.

Yes, she said later, she knew she was breaking the rules. But because the referees didn’t call it, it apparently falls under the heading of gamesmanship.

“Everybody does it,” she said. “It’s only cheating if you get caught.”

Sports equality indeed. Afterward, the women took another step in that direction when Chastain cursed on national television while excitedly complimenting Akers, calling her the “toughest goddamn player I’ve ever played with.”

What the heck. It has been a long road, so let them celebrate, even if it means offering to us a sweaty, soiled, splendid jersey.

Scent of a woman may never be the same.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.