T he 28th run of the modern Olympiad is turning me into a couch potato. OK, I know it's a bit like admitting you like Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, but hey, where else can you watch hairy, sweaty men lifting the lead weight equivalent of a Yugo right alongside beautiful women in bathing suits diving into pools? PT Barnum meet Miss World - the Greeks never had it so good. As I'm writing this piece some guys are jumping nearly 19 feet in the air over a bar with the aid of a fiberglass pole. In gym class, my chief goal was not to get stitches.
Every Olympics has its heroes. I remember golden boy Mark Spitz or the US hockey team versus Russia. USA! USA! USA! Thanks to judging scandals and designer steroids, the heroes of the modern Olympics seem to be the chemists and the appeals lawyers. Perhaps it's time for a new modern pentathlon: bribery, lab testing, reversal, litigation, appeal. Court TV should put in its bid in now for the 2008 games in Bejing. F. Lee Bailey could do the play by play.
Hero status could have gone to Paul Hamm, the men's gymnast who came back from planting his gluteus maximus onto the judge's table to winning Olympic gold in the all around with a spectacular high bar routine. Unfortunately, that same table of world-class adjudicators, apparently unraveled by the sight of the Hamm derriere vaulting in their general direction at Olympic speed, forgot to reset their abacus and gypped some Korean out of a tenth of point. Instead of gold, the Korean walked away with bronze, which is about as satisfying as a plate of soggy Kim Chee on a cold morning. Hamm garnered the gold and his spot on a Wheaties box.
Let the games begin. I'm not sure what the Korean coaches were staring at while their boy's numbers were being posted by our panel of gymnastics Einsteins. Maybe it was replays from the women's beach volleyball semis. It sure wasn't the scoreboard, that's for sure. Eventually an organization named FIG, which seems to stand for Foolish Ignorant Goofballs, decided that indeed a terrible mistake had been made and there was nothing in the name of Zeus they could do about it. Now they want Hamm to give his gold medal back, which is a bit like asking George Bush to give Iraq back to Saddam Hussein.
Hamm missed his moment. Had he shown up at the gym the next day with his shiny medal, and handed it to the crestfallen Korean with a hearty handshake and a manly hug, you would have had an instant Olympic hero. In fact, you'd be looking at the next president of the United States. Who needs Bush or Kerry when you have a guy with enough integrity to tell the truth to the world?
Greek sports fans would have cheered Hamm as Phidippides running into Athens with news of victory over the Persians. The whole image of the ugly American who wins at any cost would be swallowed up in a tsunami of international good will. World peace would break out. Bin Laden would surrender to the Pope. The women's beach volleyball team would be lining up to punch Paul Hamm's dance card. His face wouldn't just be on a box of breakfast cereal, it would be on the next five dollar bill. School children for decades would repeat the story of the man named after a Minnesota beer who gave up the gold because some dumb FIGs couldn't count to ten.
I held my breath for a day or so, but soon realized there would be no new Olympic hero from the gymnastic floor. Just another muscular guy with a squeaky voice and a gold medal with an asterisk. They come dime a dozen these days. Probably isn't even 24 carat. Maybe it's time to switch to the X Games.
Just as ennui is about to set in, out of nowhere, from the heights of Mt. Olympus, appears Matt Emmons. Matt Emmons is the sharpshooter from Alaska who had the gold all but clinched in his steady hand only to shoot at the wrong target in the final round, dropping him to eighth. And do we hear any whining from sharpshooter Matt like we hear from those tattooed prima donnas in gold sneakers otherwise known as the men's basketball team? No siree. Emmons comes out and admits he made one, big bonehead mistake by not checking that little number over the target before his trigger finger twitched.
That's right. He didn't blame his coaches, his parents, or the defective school system for not teaching him numbers. He didn't argue that it was a darn good shot and should have counted anyway, even if it was the wrong target. No, Matt Emmons screwed up royally on a world stage, and he did it with class and dignity. He deserves our respect and recognition. Maybe even a trip to the White House. He could help George Bush realize that it's OK to admit you shot at the wrong target.
Emmons' brush with Olympic gold is the story of my life. Always on the threshold of greatness, only to trip over untied shoelaces before crossing the finish line. In the garage, I have a knack for cutting a two by four to within 1/64th of an inch but two inches short. I'm the guy who buys the next lottery ticket right after the $50 million winner is sold. The day I go on vacation is the day Publisher's Clearing House pays a visit to my house and hands the check to the neighbors. I send birthday cards on the right day but the wrong month. I open wines the year after they peak. I was voted "most likely to succeed" in high school, but they never said at what. And I'm still searching. I've hit a lot of targets in my day, but they weren't the ones I was aiming at.
My Aussie friends tell me that in the great land down under they celebrate a military defeat as a national holiday. Losing with dignity is more important to Australians than winning at any cost. They call it "fair dinkum," the guy who gives it his all in a losing cause. I'd say Matt Emmons is a pretty fair dinkum bloke, by Aussie standards. They'd make him a national hero and give him a holiday. Maybe even name a beer after him.
So I think I'm going to hang the Stars and Stripes on the house today, grill a steak to medium rare, and crack open a Hamms beer. Here's to you Matt Emmons - from all the guys who dropped the ball over the fence after it was safely in the glove, who took the interception and ran the wrong way, who slam dunked into the opponent's basket - Hail to a true Olympic hero - the man who shot straight at the wrong target with head held high. We love you, man!
"The last will be first, and the first will be last," in the Kingdom of God.
I'm banking on it.