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And so it begins. National and international news outlets have climbed aboard the Beckham regurgitation train, with articles spewing out from even the most soccer abstinent outlets, transcribing the same story we’ve heard since Beckham first signed with the Galaxy. Nothing new to report – have you heard of this little league in the U.S. called MLS? – so no weblinks, but there was one piece that had some interesting stats, which just begged for a pick-your-number game. The stats, and your best guess are waiting after the jump…

late add: ok, one link to a story that is not regurgitation: Chelsea’s stars on the Beckham madness heading into their friendly with the Galaxy.

In the complex and big-money world of professional sports, it’s not so easy to quantify the worth of a player, his/her performance, or to justify the contracts paid. Part of the reason lies in the inherent difficulty in isolating the player from the team concept. Baseball is one thing, what with the titanic statistical breadth, but soccer is not so easily almanac-ed.

There is one way, however, in any sport to at least approach the subject: jersey sales. The personalized uniform is one place in professional sports where numbers speak loud and clear, and that brings us back to Beckham.

Real Madrid released some interesting statistics on the financial impact of David Beckham on the club during his Spanish tour of duty:

“In four years that Beckham played in Madrid we have generated more than 440 million euros (£300,000) in marketing and commercial activities,” the team’s marketing director Jose Sanchez said in The Sun. “In that time, profits from merchandising increased by 137 percent.”

1 million Real Madrid Beckham jerseys were reportedly sold in the first six months after his transfer from Manchester United.

The question remains how many of those customers will follow Beckham to the Galaxy store?

As I was waiting for MLS’ communications department to come up with some numbers for me, Gary Andrew Poole e-mailed me the link to his treatment for Time Magazine, in which he reported that “MLS jersey sales are already up 300% from last year, with much of the interest coming from Beckham replicas.”

MLS officials reported to me their top five selling jerseys, though unfortunately without absolute numbers. The top five are, from the top down: Reyna, Angel, Blanco, Dichio, Moreno. But what about Becks? In the e-mail I received from MLS, it was noted that, “Pre-orders for Beckham jerseys, however, eclipse Reyna sales by far. In fact, pre-orders for Beckham jerseys are about 2 and a half times the total number of MLS jerseys sold last year.”

It’s hard to know exactly what that all means without whole numbers, and in that regard, I’ve failed, but 2 and half times more than all other jerseys? That’s more than I would have guessed, and begs more questions: where are the customers buying the jerseys from? The U.S.? Europe? Asia?

I’ve got a feeling if things go well for the MLS-Beckham marriage, they will be more than happy to supply these numbers.

In the meantime, how many David Beckham Galaxy jerseys do you think will be purchased in the next six months? Write your guess in the comments section below, and we’ll come back later in the year to see the progress.

AND just so you know how insane this is getting, in case you haven’t been awake in the last month… I just got an e-mail from a W magazine representative to notify me of their Becks + Posh cover story, which included the cover image below. It kind of blew my mind - not the image, but the fact that W is reaching out to soccer blogs.

The last time I picked up a copy of W, it was for a pretty amazing photo spread of Brad and Angelina (and I don’t mean that in a Playboy kind of way; it really was a ground breaking magazine photo spread for those who care about such things). So while I have no interest to read the story, I might need to glance through the photo spread. (late add: ok, so i saw the photo spread: and it is pretty scandalous. Not up to par with the famous Jolie-Pitt shoot)