At the Olympics, every story’s a great story. The brilliance of Bolt. And a beautiful story of a small auction hoping to go big

NBC gets mocked a lot at the Olympics for showing us “touchy-feely” features on athletes, usually American ones.
But for all the heroes that are thrust at us, what I love most about the Olympics are the smaller stories we don’t always hear about in America. I stumbled across two beautiful tales of Olympians Thursday, guaranteed to put a smile on your face (or your money back; hey, it is Good News Friday.)
The first is from Dan Wetzel, the immensely talented writer for Yahoo! Sports. He wrote about the Irish female boxer Katie Taylor, who won a gold medal Thursday and had already created a frenzy back home. We in the U.S., I think, forget about how important some of these Olympians are to their home nations; we have so many superstars that we take them for granted.
Right now, in Ireland, Katie Taylor is a forever legend.

The second story I loved was more whimsical. Joe Posnanski, who as you know I think is a writing Zeus, stumbled upon a fascinating team handball player from Iceland. I know, you’re thinking, why should I care?

Because the Olympics are made up of all kinds, and this is the story of Ólafur Stefánsson, and he is strange and wonderful and just one of the millions of reasons I love the Olympics and he says thinks like “You want to play well for long enough that you leave with a medal around your neck. “That is great. But in the end, it is not about medals. … It is the journey that stirs us.”

**Here’s a terrific story that should get more publicity. A man named Samuel Annable works for a minor-league baseball team in Peoria, Ill.  After hearing the famous “Red Paper Clip” story (a man trades a paper clip for greater and greater value until he turns it into a house), Annable has decided he wants to trade two blue dice in to eventually get a sick child to a Super Bowl.

It’s a beautiful and noble goal, and I salute him. To read more about Annable and his quest, check out his blog here.

**Finally, Usain Bolt. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen another athlete quite like him. Thursday he won again, his fourth consecutive Olympic win in either the 100 or 200 meters, the first person ever to win both events at back-to-back Olympics.
He is a force of nature, he is so much better than everyone else. For the second straight Olympics, he actually slowed up in the last few meters while winning a gold medal. His time Thursday of 19.32 could’ve been even faster; that’s what’s so scary.

I know track and field gets little attention except for two weeks every four years. But it’s such a joy to be alive when a transcendent performer like Bolt is running among us.

I can’t wait to see what he does next.

Murray and Bolt take over the Olympics. A fabulous book from a ballplayer who finally made the Show (and hated it). And Italy creates a bizarre new law

*Follow me on Twitter here.

It was a hell of a day for two sporting giants at the Olympics Sunday; one we all expected to be standing atop him sport, the other a pretty pleasant surprise.
First, the man we thought would have gold draped around him:

Usain Bolt is the one track and field star who commands your attention, the guy who was so indescribably fast in Beijing four years ago, winning the 100 meters and the 200 meters, that he re-defined what “fast” is in the sport. (As was once said about the great Negro Leagues star Cool Papa Bell, “he was so fast he could turn out the light switch and be in bed before it got dark.)
Bolt is why we watch the Olympics; to see someone so superhuman raise their game just a little higher. Sure, the luster came off the Jamaican a little this year when he lost in the Olympic Trials, but Sunday the fastest man on Earth was back on top.

Bolt (and again, could any Hollywood screenwriter come up with a better surname for track star?) blew away the field in the 100, winning in 9.63 seconds, a new Olympic record. Amazing.

The other hero Sunday was Andy Murray. Even being as big a Roger Federer fan as I am, I was happy for the long-suffering, and long-underachieving Scottish star. Always getting close but never quite winning the big matches, the UK’s best tennis player in decades thrashed Federer at Centre Court, losing just nine games and winning a gold medal.
It’s not a Grand Slam win, which Murray desperately seeks, but it was pretty terrific and moving, nonetheless.

On a related note, God I love the Olympics.

**Got a super book recommendation for you, if you’re a baseball fan, or just a fan of great writing. A couple of years ago a career minor-league pitcher named Dirk Hayhurst wrote the fabulous “The Bullpen Gospels,” a book about a year in the minors that touched on so much more than baseball. It was smart, it was funny, it was touching (read more about it here) and I highly recommend it.

This spring Hayhurst wrote a sequel, called “Out of My League.” It’s about his 2008 season, which finds him finally in Triple-A, madly in love with a woman, his alcoholic brother finally sober, and Dirk waiting desperately for a call to the bigs.

When it finally comes, you expect he’ll be thrilled, and celebrate, and cherish every day in the majors. But it doesn’t turn out that way, and this is where an already-fabulous book gets even better. Hayhurst beautifully writes about the moments when your dreams come true, only to open the door to crushing, soul-sucking failure.
I don’t know if Hayhurst’s second book is better than his first. But it’s definitely at least as good. Pick it up here

**Haven’t come across any “man, they are so crazy in Italy” stories in a while, partly because everyone’s favorite punchline across the Ocean, Silvio Burlesconi, isn’t in charge there anymore.
But this story caught me as pretty bizarre: A new law has been passed making it illegal to utter the phrase “You don’t have the balls,” in Italy.
Apparently a man took his cousin to court for questioning his manhood by, well, questioning the size of his testicles.
And an appeals court ruled that, well, you can’t say a man is less than a man!
Not sure this law would hold up in America; We might have 50 million arrests at bars across the country every weekend.

My annual 24-hour holiday from food (it’s a Jewish thing)

So it’s Yom Kippur Sunday night. Always a rough time for your humble blog author.

Ask anyone who knows me: I love food. Love, love, LOVE food. I love the smell of hot food coming out of the oven, whether it’s chicken parmigiana, lasagna, steak, whatever. I love the first bite of a dish prepared out of the kitchen of a restaurant, when you’ve had 20 minutes to wait and anticipate and build up expectations.

I’m not going to go all Frank Bruni on you here, but you get the point.

I eat constantly, pretty much every few hours., so much so that when my wife or my in-laws asks who’s hungry, they don’t even wait for an answer from me. Because they know the answer is always yes.

“Of course I could eat!” I reply. It also annoyed my sister and others throughout my life that I could eat crap and not gain weight; I had my mother’s metabolism, thankfully. (Of course, now in mid-30s I eat much healthier than before and actually am gaining weight. Just the other day a guy in my adult tennis league, who hadn’t seen me since May, told me that “it looked like I put on some pounds” over the summer. Seriously? I wanted to say. But I digress).

Anyway, so me and food, we’ve been in a longtime, loving relationship.  Except for once a year, we have a violent, 24-hour breakup. I don’t look at it, I don’t touch it, I try not to even think about it.

They call it Yom Kippur, the Jews’ Day of Atonement. Apparently we don’t eat or drink from sundown to sundown, and our sins are washed away.

(Have you heard the great old Jon Stewart joke about Yom Kippur? “You don’t eat or drink for one day and all your sins are forgiven . BEAT THAT!! Beat that with your “Lent” . . . what’s that, 40 days? Forty days to one . . . even in sin, you’re paying retail!”)

I’m not really a practicing Jew; I don’t go to synagogue regularly, at least not since my Bar Mitzvah 21 years ago. But for some reason, I’ve always observed Yom Kippur.

I try to be a good person; I don’t think I commit too many sins (I run a few red lights, accidentally have backed into other cars in parking lots, commit the occasional grand larceny, that kind of thing), but I still feel that it’s important to spend one day a year, cleansing your body and soul.

It’s tough, though, I gotta tell ya. When I was a kid, it was no big deal. I remember the big “breaking fast” meal over at the Lipton’s house every year; family and friends got together and noshed on bagels and lox. Time just flew by like Usain Bolt in the 100 meters back then.

Now, especially when Yom Kippur bleeds into a work day, those last few hours are rough. No water, no morsels of food can pass my lips, and by 3:30 p.m I’m pretty much running on fumes. I start dreaming of what I’ll have for dinner around, oh, 1 o’clock or so.

But you know what, I survive every year. My people have been doing it for thousands of years, so what’s one day, right?

To anyone else fasting out there, I say good luck and if I can offer only one piece of advice, it’s this:

Try not to pass any bakeries or pizzerias Monday.

A man called Bolt

Lots of things have happened in this sporting summer. Roger Federer won Wimbledon, which thrilled me. The Yankees pulled away in the American League East. Also good.

But I think the greatest phenomenon of the last few months is a 23-year-old Jamaican guy who right now is miles beyond everyone else in his sport.

We’ve become so immune to numbers in athletics. Some guy hits 65 home runs, and we yawn. A running back rushes for 200 yards and four touchdowns. Meh. A basketball player scores 50 points in a game? Pretty good, but … next.

What Usain Bolt is doing right now at the World Championships of track and field in Berlin is a rare and beautiful thing. Every generation, we get an athlete who takes his sport to the next level. Babe Ruth did it in the 1920s.

Muhammad Ali had the 1960s and ’70s. Jack Nicklaus was right there with him in his sport. Some kid from North Carolina named Michael Jordan brought his game into another stratosphere in the 1980s and ’90s, while Michael Phelps brought those in the water up on his shoulders into a glorious place.

What Bolt is doing, in smashing his own world records in the 100 and 200 meter dashes, is something remarkable. He’s destroying the idea that track records are broken in increments, hundredths of a second at a time.

He beat his own 100-meter record by .11, then broke his 200-meter by the same mark. Do you know how ridiculous that is? It’s like a halfback running for 350 yards in a game, or a baseball player hitting 81 home runs in a season.

It’s laughable, how much of a mockery Bolt is making the competition. Poor Tyson Gay ran the 100 this week faster than any American ever had, posting a 9.71. And he wasn’t even close to winning, as Bolt’s 9.58 blew him away.

His margin of victory – 0.62sec – in the 200 is greater than the sum total of winning margins of the five previous winners of the world 200 title.

As many have said this week, Bolt is simply redefining what the human body can do. Consider:

– His 19.19 in the 200, when broken down by 100-meter increments, were a 9.58 and a 9.61. So he equaled his own world record, and then missed it on the second 100 by .03 seconds. Nobody ever runs the second 200 that fast.

– We’ve always been told sprinters have to short and stride quickly. Bolt is 6-foot-5 and takes long strides. When he runs, he’s like a gazelle, attacking the pavement and the air around him like it owes him money.

– He can still get better. In both the Beijing Olympics and in the 200 this week, Bolt slowed a little in the last five meters. He can go faster. He can run a 19.05 200, and maybe a unbelievable 9.4 in the 100.

Listen to veteran track and field people talk about Bolt, and it’s like they used to talk about M.J. when he first started with the Bulls.

TV announcer Ato Boldon just keeps screaming “Oh my God!” when talking about Bolt. Michael Johnson, never known for humility, can’t get over how “ridiculous” Bolt is.

Is the kid a little cocky? Absolutely.  He says things like “I’m on my way to becoming a legend,” and talks about being up for knightood.

But wouldn’t you be a little in love with yourself if you broke the a world record in the last FIVE major meets you’ve competed at?

Now … the big elephant in the room here is this: Is he clean? So far, he’s tested positive for nothing more than excitement. Track and field has been plagued with so many superstars who flash on the scene, then are disgraced by drug testing results.

Ben Johnson. Marion Jones. Justin Gatlin. Just to name a few.

I don’t know if Bolt is clean or dirty. I pray that he’s doing all this legitimately, because it’s such a good story. But a fellow scribe of mine, Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle, wrote a great piece saying that Bolt is providing so much joy, we shouldn’t race to assume he’s guilty.

“You can’t rob me of my joy,” Solomon writes. “He is the most amazing, entertaining athlete on the planet.”

I couldn’t agree more. If it turns out he’s cheating, well, I’ll be sad because he’s such a remarkable runner.

For now, I’m just going to enjoy this Jamaican kid lift everyone higher, higher and higher.

Outrage not worth it for Brett (Hamlet) Favre

I wanted to be upset and angered and outraged when I heard that Brett Favre, he of more “retirement” pronouncements than Larry Holmes and Rocky Balboa combined, announced Tuesday he was coming back to play for the Minnesota Vikings.

I wanted to be ticked off that Favre had again lied to everyone’s face when he declared back in July that he was definitely retired for good.

You know, kind of like when he said after leaving my beloved New York Jets after last season that he was through. And when he retired as a Packer after the 2007 season. And when he retired … well, you get the jist.

But I just couldn’t work myself into a froth over it. To me, Favre’s just not worth it. He’s clearly a raging egomaniac who has now held 3 (count ‘em, three) franchises hostage over the past two years, while we all waited to see what King Brett would do.

“You know who he is?” I said to my friend Tony Jones on the phone today. “He’s Freddy Krueger. Everytime you think we’re rid of him, every time he’s definitely, totally, completely gone, Favre pops back up.”

Tony agreed.

I just really don’t care about Favre anymore; as a Jets fan, Brett was like that really hot girl in high school who you NEVER think you’ll be able to get to go out with you. Then, amazingly, she agrees to be your girlfriend for little while, only to be totally not what you hoped for. (Incidentally, there was a great “Freaks and Geeks” storyline about this very same thing.)

A few questions I have about this whole new Favre arrangement:

– Can Vikings fans really just forget the last 16 years of hating this guy and cheer their guts out for him? Forget where I read it today, but this is like Derek Jeter putting on a Red Sox jersey, or Larry Bird getting traded to the Lakers. The Purple-clad Vikes fans hated No. 4′s guts for almost two decades, and now they’re going to pin their Super Bowl hopes on him? Definitely a weird set of emotions today if you’re a Vikes fan.

– Another question: Did Brad Childress and Co. watch any of the last six Jets games last season? Because I did. And injury or no injury, Favre has nothing left. I don’t think he’ll lead the Vikings to the Super Bowl anymore than Sage Rosenfels would’ve.

– Am I bitter as a Jets fan? Not really. I’ve said repeatedly that I loved that the Jets went and got Favre last yea, and that I was equally happy when he quit. It was a gamble worth taking, and I really don’t care about him anymore.

(What I do care about is my NFL Jets Favre jersey being devalued now; I kinda hoped it’d be a collector’s item one day, you know, Favre’s last-ever NFL jersey. Oh well; I’ll have to figure out another way to pay for my future kid’s college tuition)

– Will Packers fans boo Favre at Lambeau this year? Not sure. The question was tackled in a good SI.com column from Don Banks, and Packers fan and author David Maraniss said he wasn’t sure. Packers fans are wildly loyal and I just don’t know if they have it in their hearts to boo their legend.

Then again, I was just perusing the message boards on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s Favre story, and well, the mood is not very friendly.

Anyway, I’m done with Favre. Play, don’t play, I really don’t care. Just for the love of God, don’t ever actually tell us you’re retiring again!

**Couple more scattered thoughts on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning:

– One more beauty of Facebook: It has completely ruined the ability of friends to say they forgot your birthday. If you’re Facebook friends with someone, there’s a little application on everyone’s home page that reminds you of all your friends’ birthdays.

It’s really quite wonderful; heard from so many people yesterday with good wishes. Would they’ve remembered without Facebook? Probably not. But it’s just one more nice way to stay in touch in our incredibly disconnected world.

**I’ve watched the Usain Bolt race a few more times since the weekend. I think I may have to do a separate post on him soon; I’m just so blown away by what he’s doing to track and field. He’s taking his sport to a whole new level.

Here’s a great story by Christopher Clarey in the NY times about him:

**Finally, Democrats in Congress =absolutely spineless jellyfish. So pissed off at my Party right now. Why must we always, always, screw things up when we’re finally in charge? Push a damn health care bill through, you’re in the MAJORITY!

Michael Vick on “60 Minutes:” I believe him. Also, Usain Bolt is crazy fast.

 

It’s always dangerous to look into another man’s heart. (I’ve also learned it’s dangerous to tell a woman she has too many pairs of shoes, to ask a rampaging bull to kindly slow down, and to cut a dinner roll with a huge, sharp knife. But I digress).

We don’t ever really know what’s going on in somebody’s head, what their motives are, and if someone who has committed some truly awful crimes is really repentant.

As a fairly cynical sportswriter, I feel like I have a pretty good “phony” radar for athletes. It goes off every time Terrell Owens or Kobe Bryant speaks, for example.

But watching Michael Vick on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, I’ve gotta say that I was truly impressed. I thought Vick came across as sincere, humble, and pretty broken up about what he had done.

Now, I’m sure he was coached by his p.r. people. But I think there was too much real emotion on display for it to be all fake. I liked when James Brown (who did a surprisingly good job as the interviewer; boy would I have liked to see Mike Wallace grill Vick) asked the disgraced dog-fighting kingpin whose fault all his problems were.

“I blame me,”Vick said … ”I deserved to lose the $130 million (NFL contract).”

“Yeah, I deserve to lose it,” Vick continued. I deserve to lose the $130 million. Why would a guy who was making a $130 million and, you know, on the flip side, you know, killing dogs or doing the wrong things, why would– you know, he don’t — he don’t deserve it.”

I also was watching Vick’s face closely while Brown read off some of the horrendous details of what Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels did to the poor animals. Vick seemed to be visibly wincing. I got the feeling that every time he relives what he did to the dogs, he feels pain. Which is very good, because he should feel pain.

Vick talked a lot about the “disgust” he felt about himself, and for the entire interview he seemed like a guy who knew just how royally he screwed up his life.

I understand that there are a lot of people who don’t think the ex-Falcons quarterback should’ve gotten a chance to play in the NFL again. But this America, and we give people second chances.

I have no idea if Michael Vick will really do everything he can to educate black and rural kids that dogfighting is wrong, and they should steer clear of it. But he deserves the opportunity to prove that prison changed him, and so far, he seems like a different man.

Good for him if he really has changed. He can do so much more good after falling from grace than he ever could’ve done when he was on top of the mountain.

Couple other thoughts on the “60 Minutes,” piece, whose transcript is here.

**I thought James Brown did an outstanding job, journalistically; much better than I was expecting.

** The most revealing part of the piece for me was when Vick talked about how, as a little kid, he saw dogfighting and thought it was OK. And that opinion was reinforced when, he recalled, some local policemen in Virginia pulled up to a dogfight one night, got out of their cars, then drove away.

In no way shape or form is it an excuse, but kids learn what they see at that age. 

P.S. Hell of a day in sports Sunday, on the whole. Usain Bolt, who is so fast he makes lightning look slow, set a new world record by running a 9.58 in the 100 meter dash in Berlin. That’s .009 seconds faster than Bolt’s old world record, which is a huge gap in a small race like this. (By the way, is there a more perfect name for a sprinter than “Bolt?”). This kid from Jamaica is making a mockery of all past sprinters; he’s just on a whole different playing field than anyone, ever, in his event.

Check out the incredible Bolt race here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0wmR3gic5I

 And although I loathe golf with all my being, I see Tiger Woods was chased down from behind by someone named Y.E. Yang and blew the PGA Championships on Sunday. Mr. Woods shot a 75, and Yang shot a 70.

 

 

Tiger Woods getting caught from behind in the last round of a major? Never happened before, and may never happen again.

One more reason sports is the greatest reality television of all time.