Long Island has a serious case of Knicks fever. Bakeries are churning out orange-and-blue cakes, cookies and doughnuts. Restaurants and delis are making sandwiches named for players, and at least one is offering an orange-and-blue pizza. Watch parties are everywhere.

The fervor here and throughout the region surrounding the New York Knicks’ clash with the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals is enough to make you forget that the world’s biggest sporting event does not actually kick off until Thursday. That’s the opening day of soccer’s World Cup, which this year is being hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Our parochial rapture, as delightful and consuming as it is, typically would pale in comparison to the global obsession with the quadrennial crowning of what the rest of the world calls football. But even allowing for the mania that has greeted the Knicks’ gritty march, a close cousin of the passions roused in entire nations by a winning soccer team, something seems a bit off with........

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