Freeman: I can't get enough
People want to talk about the Olympics, and I just can't do it. A neighbor wanted to talk about swimmer Michael Phelps. A friend wanted to discuss soccer. The guy at the gym today actually tried to engage me in a conversation about Olympic tennis.
Sorry, guy in the gym. I don't do Olympic tennis.
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| If Doyel wanted to watch minor league baseball, he'd turn on a Padres game. (AP) |
It wasn't always this way for me, but the Olympics are a great idea that has been bastardized beyond the point of recognition. Once upon a time the Olympics were noble and romantic: Whose amateur athletes are the best in the world? Now, the Olympics are a blasphemy because the first two words of that previous sentence -- Whose amateur ... -- have been made irrelevant.
The "who" is blurred. Here were my thoughts on that topic last week. They're the same this week. The Olympics aren't about welcoming any and all naturalized citizens to our team and sitting around a campfire and humming a few bars of Dylan and feeling progressive and liberal.
The Olympics are about the athletes our country can produce, and pitting them against the athletes your country can produce. If my country didn't produce Bernard Lagat, he shouldn't be running for me in the Olympics. Similarly, if your country didn't produce Chris Kaman, he shouldn't be playing basketball for you in the Olympics.
In addition to your country's athletes against mine, the Olympics were created as a celebration of amateurism. It was once your amateurs against mine. Quaint can be cool, and that was it. Your amateurs. My amateurs. Let's see who wins.
Now, it's your pros against my pros, and your pros don't even have to be from your country.
Athletes drawing a paycheck and swapping teams ... that isn't the Olympics. That's the National League West. And don't get me started on the National League West.
And don't get me started on the 2008 Olympics, at least not as an athletic event. The politics of it are fascinating, but the actual competition? Much of it on tape delay, sappy human-interest features filling the dead space on NBC? Unwatchable. Forgive me for playing the caveman card, but I simply cannot get into the drama of so many silly sports. Kayak? Canoe? Synchronized diving? Someone change the channel. I'd rather watch the National League West.
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I realize this argument puts me in the minority. Everyone else seems to be watching the Olympics, including Mike Freeman. Congratulations, everyone else. You're just like Mike Freeman. Television ratings say the Beijing Games are drawing like a really good NFL game. Makes no sense to me, but to each his own. Watch it if you want.
But understand what you're watching. You're not watching an every-four-years occurrence. You're watching the same thing you've been watching all year -- every year. You're watching the same NBA players, like LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki. The same tennis players, like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. The same soccer players. The same track athletes. You're watching the same pro volleyball players, for crying out loud.
Freeman's going to wax poetic about swimming -- and I'll give him this: what Phelps is doing is remarkable -- but as a whole that sport has been ruined. By swimsuit technology, by doping, by something. Whatever the cause, every race seems to have a new world record, and maybe you like that. Me, I liked it better when a world record was news. Today, a world record is newsworthy only if it isn't broken.
The only decent sport left that remains up to the original Olympic ideal is boxing. And boxing has been compromised over the years by incomprehensible or unethical decisions that had to be replaced by a ridiculous computerized scoring system that registers clean shots, turning fights into games of patty-cake as each boxer tries to out-tap the other guy. It's a non-pro style, which is why Olympic boxing is no longer introducing us to future world champions (Cassius Clay, Leon Spinks, Sugar Ray Leonard, Mark Breland ...).
But at least it's better than baseball.
In the Olympics, baseball games that go beyond the 10th inning become a cartoon. Both teams begin every inning, starting with the 11th, with runners on first and second ... and they can start from any point in their batting order. This is a new rule, possibly the dumbest rule in Olympics history, but Olympic baseball deserves this rule.
Professionals are allowed to play in Olympic baseball, but because it coincides with the major league baseball season -- and the Olympics are no match for next week's Detroit-Texas series -- what we have are a bunch of minor-leaguers. So we get pro ballplayers, but they're second-tier pro ballplayers.
Like I said, that's not the Olympics. That's the National League West.
