Sixteen years ago, I remember going out on a ledge.

At the time, I was working as a sportswriter for this very newspaper. In fact, I was only a few weeks from the end of my full-time employment at 135 Baltimore Street. That job change and the risk I took are not connected.

I sat down to write a column and knew I might not get the best reception for my topic. I had probably done it before, giving me some insight into the potential backlash. I forged ahead nonetheless.

My column focused on the upcoming World Cup in France. I professed my love for the sport at a time when many folks really didn’t care about the impact of the naturalization of defender David Regis and how that would affect the US team in the summer of 1998. (Spoiler alert: It played a role in our awful last-place performance.)

As I begin to finalize my plans for the 2014 World Cup, I know that I will have many more people sharing my interest than I did in 1998. No one really got upset at that column, which I might add had a tremendous name drop of young defender Leo Cullen, a player some thought could be a shining star for future US teams. He ended up being a marginal pro.

I feel grateful that I got in on the ground floor of soccer fandom in the US. My fraternity in college had a bunch of players on the varsity team, which infected me with the bug that really exploded in the mid-1990s.

Since then, I have seen the US team play a bunch of times in various locations. I have flown to Columbus, Ohio, and made a kamikaze drive to suburban Boston to root on our national team. I have also fretted alone in my basement during World Cup games and hugged strangers in bars when things have gone well.

I have a network of friends spread across the country who I have met through watching games or at least arguing about them online. I remember the times when we had to follow games through the message board commentary of someone who had the hard-to-find broadcast of an important game.

That’s why writing about the 1998 World Cup represented some sort of risk. Now, I will be able to stream the games on my phone at work. I can choose from multiple public parties showing the games I want to see. I can bring up the US team in casual conversation without worrying that people will think I’m weird.

I mean, I know people will think I’m weird, but it will have nothing to do with talking about soccer.

The World Cup will occupy a lot of my thoughts for the next month, which is nothing new. But the differences between previous iterations and this year’s event are kind of stark.

If the US beats Portugal in their second game, I will celebrate in a bar with a large crowd. When we upset the same team in 2002, I watched alone in my house, careful not to wake up anyone else and sporadically running upstairs to post on a message board.

I’m glad that I don’t have to go out on that ledge anymore , but I kind of miss it.