God, do we miss Michael Phelps. America already has the shakes so bad for more images of that smiling, happy, jug-eared lad with medals pulling on his neck that they crave even random TV shots of his mother to calm them down.
And therein lies today's sermon, fellow parishioners. Here comes the hard part for Our Mikey -- the re-entry.
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| If he isn't careful, Michael Phelps could get overexposed -- and spark resentment. (AP) |
As you might guess, this being America and all, cashing in is the New York Yankees. Keeping your dignity is the Arizona Cardinals.
We are talking here of the third rail of celebrity, one which fries far more people than it benefits. There a lot of ways for us to become sick of MichaelPhelps (starting with the fact that nobody refers to him as anything but "MichaelPhelps" -- not just first name, not just last name, only "MichaelPhelps")
Up until this point, Phelps (we're going to try the surname-only thing, but we're not optimistic) has faced even mild criticism only twice in his life, schoolyard taunting excepted. One, when people wondered aloud if he might be using some sort of chemical pick-me-up to be wasting the record books so decisively, and two, when he was used in the old school-new school debate over who is the greatest athlete of all time. Neither time did he participate in the debate, but these are not good times for trust or perspective in sport.
As for the performance-enhancing issue, Phelps is paying the price all exceptional performers must pay now -- the loss of the benefit of the doubt stolen from them by their lying predecessors. Even the lack of evidence doesn't work as a defense, because so many others before him had that to lean on, only for us to discover that the science of chemistry is light years ahead of the science of chemistry detection.
The other is the "is he the greatest of all time?" debate, which is (a) unprovable, (b) silly, and (c) mostly reveals the prejudices rather than the scholarship of the arguer. He is one of the greatest of all time, in a very small class with Carl Lewis, Jesse Owens and a few others, and that ought to be plenty good enough.
But now we've strayed off the point, which is this: Phelps is about to be inundated with commercial offers the likes of which have not been seen since Tiger Woods met Phil Knight. Credit card companies, car companies, big-time watch companies, Speedo -- just take the Woods portfolio and transfer it over to get a sense of Phelps' starting point.
Woods has managed to keep his status elevated, even in ways that Michael Jordan didn't (I mean, Charlie Sheen in underwear ads?), but the line he has to straddle is both fine and razor-sharp. One misstep, and there's blood all over the studio floor.
Plus, Phelps has to stay clean on clean, as Woods has. No DUIs, no PEDs, no making it rain anywhere, no domestic violence, no clumsy TV appearances, not even a diffident personality. I mean, Mark Spitz did what Phelps did decades ago, but somehow couldn't get past his sometimes off-putting style, and now look where he is. Nose pressed against the window without an invitation. Damn, that's hard stuff.
These are the best times of Phelps' celebrity life right now. He has been locked inside our heads as the man who cheated time (sorry, Mike Cavic), the man who had time cheated on his behalf (thank you, Jason Lezak), and the man who cleaned out the field (all the other races). Plus he has just enough personality without seeming hungry for stardom, and no revealed quirks or character flaws save a pathological need to be wet and practicing.
But the traps are already revealing themselves, like the Chad Johnson race. Please. Did Tiger Woods come out of his first major championship saying, "I think I need to play 18 televised holes with Rick Rhoden, or Charles Barkley to establish the brand"? Jesse Owens had to race thoroughbreds in his post-Olympic career because of the times and the limited number of ways black athletes were allowed to cash in on their celebrity in the '30s. This can't be anything but a bad idea for both Phelps and Johnson, no matter how much money some Marc Ecko-knockoff wants to lay out.
Point is, there is at the earning level of someone like Phelps good money and bad money (for the rest of us, there is only the one kind -- money that goes to the phone company). There is fame and then there's notoriety. There is glory and there is huckstering. There is even swimming too long.
And this is just the start of the rest of MichaelPhelps' life. Hope he's up to it.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
