Picking up from last week: Responses and Round Two.

His response to my initial message, published last week:

HIM: "Thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to write. I really appreciate it. I want you to know that I read your entire email and am impressed by your passion for track and love for your son. You are right about many things: We, in the media, do often focus on the negative. And we do exalt the bad apples in sports. I would add to that correct assessment that readers respond to the negative more than the positive. When I write positive columns on athletes - which I do often - the response is often minimal. Don't get me wrong: I hear from many fine people who take the time to say some very nice things. However, I have found that an "edgy" column or a column about something unpleasant often stirs readers to write very long emails like yours. And if you write about race, forget about it! People come out of the woodwork. It can be disheartening as a writer because I work just as hard on positive columns as I do on negative ones, but I guess people mostly write to me when they are upset. If something moves them or makes them feel good, they write less. It's just a fact of life. Another fact of life is that the negative things I mentioned in Sunday's column are really happening. I'm not making them up. Kelli White has been banned. The USADA is massing against Tim Montgomery, Marion Jones and other "big names." Your points about other sports and drug testing are well taken and are echoed often by people in track. Testing in baseball, for example, is a joke and I've written that in my column. However, the situation is what it is in track. The people within USADA and others such as the expert I quoted from a New York Times story often say the same thing: that they are having a hard time keeping up with the cheaters. I actually do know the amount of testing that track athletes must endure - far more than baseball players, that's for sure - but the point remains. The testers feel outflanked by the cheaters. I'm not making that up either. Actually, my point in this column was to look forward to the trials and touch on the "drug scandal" because it could have an impact on the trials. The 2000 event was a wonderful experience and I wrote that in my column. I had such a great time that I saved my press credential - something I never do. These trials could be just as great....or not. We'll have to wait and see. In closing I would say this - we have written many, many positive stories on good guys like your son. In the past several weeks our paper has been filled with them and we will continue to write those stories. If you missed them I'm not surprised - that happens all the time, as I said. Anyway, I do thank you for writing and hope that you continue to read the column. Maybe one of these days I'll actually write something that you like.

"My best to you and your son.

PS - I have actually done some strenuous things in my life. I was a bit of an athlete myself as a kid. Not a good one but I had a great time. And alas, I didn't go to a single keg party as a college student. I was pretty boring, actually. I lived at home and rode my bike to college, then came home again at the end of the day. I was bitten by the newspaper bug as a college student and went into the business, but not as a sports writer. I wrote news for 15 years and covered immigration and labor. The Bee sent me to South America in 1997 during President Clinton's state visit and I only came to sports in 2000 after I had written a couple of baseball-themed books. Sports intrigued me because it seemed that sports had jumped off the sports page onto the front page and had permeated our lives in many ways. I actually feel like an oddball among my sports colleagues because I'm interested in a lot more than just the games and scores. Anyway, I've prattled on too long. Take care.

I kick off Round Two:

ME: "Thanks for the heartfelt response--you're still miles ahead of Kreidler, Van Vliet (may he rest in peace) and Burns, who never bothered to respond at all.

"What I'm looking for in Section C is someone who has the guts to be a Dan Weintraub--someone who will go his or her own way and challenge the cliches and conventions with a little solid research, thought, and perspective. I can't make you see what's already there. In your position, you have the opportunity (if not the responsibility) to help us find our way a little faster and grow in knowledge and appreciation. If you refuse to do so, that's fine. Just don't write columns bemoaning the absence of quality and integrity in sport when it's obvious to those of us who are out here living with it. Controversy is not the same as truth; learn and celebrate the difference.

Thanks again for responding."

...And, his response:

HIM: "Fair enough. And if you don't mind, I have two follow-up questions for you:

• "Do you read my column regularly?
• "And what is the "truth" that I overlooked in last Sunday's column?

Thanks."

...And, finally, serve:

ME: "I read your column when I'm attracted by the topic--which isn't often, since all of you in Section C are compelled for economic reasons to write about that which seems comparatively trivial, if not downright profane, to me. Athletics mean more to me than getting drunk, painting my face, or playing fantasy slavery, and no amount of ink will ever persuade me that three goofy beer-distributorship heirs with the shekels to buy a sports franchise to play with are pillars of our community. Keep your bread and circuses; I'll take Virgil and Cicero.

"The truth: The Olympic ideal is real and available to everyone. It burns brightly in the breasts of the young because it is in our nature. It is the purest form of athletic endeavor that there is--the desire to be adjudged by objective measure the strongest, swiftest, and most skilled warrior on the field. To stand on the podium, honored by the laurel wreath and the anthem, and to wear that venerated crown for a lifetime. To put down the sword and compete with your fellows in honor and mutual respect. To know and understand one another on the common ground of civil competition. The ancient pentathlon was celebrated every quadrennium for eleven centuries until canceled by a Christian emperor. The multievent was revived in 1912 in the modern Decathlon and the Games have survived every attempt since to kill, suspend, and bowdlerize them. Hundreds of thousands of Earthlings dream and aspire, at all times between competitions and at great personal sacrifice, with neither hope nor real care for recompense. All of those who try and fail are better for the attempt, and most certainly better than those who don't try. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to share this vision in our own lives know this. This is what is worth learning about and celebrating because it makes us all better. These lessons are transferable to other forms of competition--even our peculiarly weird and violent ones--though the result is less pure, but only if the ideal is respected.

"Here's an apocryphal story. It was rumored a decade or so ago that a promoter was trying to contrive some sort of competition between Sergei Bubka, the legendary pole vaulter and truly one of the greatest athletes who has every lived, by any measure, and Michael Jordan. In connection with this endeavor, Bubka was asked if he could dunk a basketball. 'Of course,' he replied. 'But, why?'"

"If you missed the point, you need to learn more about the pole vault. That's my point."

...And, volley:

HIM: "Great. thanks."

NEXT WEEK: Many parts of contemporary speech.

Prologue: I hadn’t intended to return to the subject of sport so soon, but the publication last week of the new book “exposing” Barry Bonds’ obvious use of performance-enhancing substances over time and the renewed media hoo-hah is too tempting. Unless you’ve lived in a cave since mid-2003, you’ll know that the Bonds case was uncovered incidentally. Seized records disclosed that he was a customer of a “lab” busted by regular in-training testing of elite track and field athletes.

Breaking the rules to gain an edge on the competition is found in every human endeavor, from corporate governance to running red lights; it’s what’s done about it that’s relevant. You already know I’m a big fan of track and field and the Olympic movement from personal experience and, typically, I can tolerate our sports media’s routine ignorance and hypocrisy concerning our “major” and “minor” sports. What I cannot abide is when they wail about the lack of integrity and heroism in modern sport when they can’t find it right under their noses and, worse, when they tar with the same brush those “minor” sports that are serious about detecting and punishing cheaters as the wrist-slapping-when-caught “major” sports by which they are economically enslaved.

A rhetorical question: Outside of political pundits, is there any other class of morons that misses the point more often than sports columnists?

To illustrate, this rant and next reproduce two e-mail exchanges I had with a local columnist over three days, June 14-17, 2004. In his column, he’d swaddled the impending U.S.A. Track and Field Olympic Trials about to begin in our town in the BALCO doping “scandal” to foreshadow the entire sport’s demise. [NOTE: I’ve truncated some details in my messages because I covered them last week and done a little reformatting to accommodate blog requirements; otherwise, they and the responses are verbatim.]

ME: “Well, once again it’s time for the scribes and pharisees of American sport — most of whom, in my experience, attained their exalted positions having done nothing more strenuous in their lives than wrestle kegs to the second floors of frat houses — to pronounce American track and field either on the respirator or dead. The difference this season is that it’s occurring in an Olympic year before the Trials and the Games, due apparently to the fact that the USADA has had the poor judgment to:

1. Persist in its ongoing efforts to prevent cheating before a competition occurs by detecting and punishing cheaters, and
2. Do so in public.

I regret that you’ve joined this anti-Greek chorus; I especially regret that you’ve done it in such a hollow and uninformed way.

I won’t bother with the obvious, jarring hypocrisies; I noticed in one of the BALCO retread stories in the Bee the other day a reference to “this ever-widening scandal.” There hasn’t been a new fact adduced in months. It followed another piece that devoted several thousand words to the notion that Barry Bonds might not have taken performance-enhancing substances. Forget “performance-enhancing”– our “major” sport millionaires are so cocooned that their sanctioned drug-testing regimes (if you can even call them that without snickering) protect them from multiple offenses involving illegal (as in, “you and I go to jail”) substances. You have no clue what USATF athletes agree to and do to remain in competition; evidently, you don’t care, either. The two sustaining quotes in your column: one from a local, former “mentor” of an athlete who trains elsewhere and a professor of veterinary science with expertise in horse doping! In case you do one day develop a taste for actual research, here’s the USADA’s web site. Take 10 minutes to learn what these athletes put themselves through, voluntarily.

My family, friends, acquaintances, and I will be at the Trials. We have two all-event passes and blocks of 20 reserved-seat and 15 general-admission tickets for the two days of the decathlon. Many other people we know will be there, too, at their own expense. Why? Simple. There is a young man competing who grew up in our house and has nourished himself on the Olympic dream for 10 years, to the exclusion of nearly all else save his college degree. He is not a cheater, nor are his dozens of friends and hundreds of peers who will be chasing that dream in July. They have willingly submitted themselves to the most comprehensive set of rules ever designed to advance the ideal of clean competition. The overwhelming majority of compliant athletes have no popular voice, most probably because they don’t have phalanxes of agents, lawyers, and flacks running interference for them; their integrity is its own reward. All they want is for names to be named and penalties to be assessed so the idle, irresponsible speculation you in the media indulge in with such regularity will cease. We will be there to honor him and all of them for their dedication and sacrifice to what they do, especially in the face of all this published and broadcast nonsense.

We are track and field fans for life and we owe this to our son’s sharing this dream with us. How have we been enriched, you ask? The lessons learned or reinforced in our shared experience include:

• It’s not the destination, but the journey — not the grades earned, but the lessons learned. How you conduct yourself is at least as important as what you win.
• Even in an “individual” sport, no one climbs the mountain alone. You owe what you achieve in equal measures to those who have gone before, those who lift you up with their own hands and hearts, and those who will follow.
• The best of competitions occur in an atmosphere of civility and respect. This is nowhere more apparent than in the multi-events. t is possible to unite in common purpose, contest vigorously, and remain close throughout.
• Sport need not be violent to be spirited. Rules are rules; the more they are bent or ignored, the more competition is degraded. Men’s professional basketball—to settle momentarily on Section C’s “heroes” du jour, who are busily churning out excuses as to why they cannot be bothered to represent their country in Athens — is rugby in underwear, in my opinion. Size and brute force are not synonymous with athletic skill. At its best, sport is raising and surpassing human thresholds, not bullying others into submission.
• We are all citizens of the world. I’m more convinced than ever that the international arena of sport is our best chance to win and secure the peace — especially with the know-nothing, neo-isolationists who are running things in the geopolitical realm right now.
• Tradition. The multievents have been measuring the greatest warrior-athletes since the seventh century before Christ; the first Olympics was held in 776 B.C. and continued virtually uninterrupted for 1,100 years. This year, the decathlon will be contested at its ancestral birthplace in the Cradle of Democracy.
• Duty, honor, country. My son was given the chance to pursue his dream by the grace of the U.S. Army’s Army Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) operations, the program which subsidizes the U.S. Army’s World-Class Athlete Program with non-tax dollars, for which he was selected after he enlisted. (He was at boot camp on September 11, 2001.) Here’s the WCAP’s web site, in case you’re interested.

Barring commercial sponsorship — like the U.S. Decathlon Team had from Visa from 1990-99 — he realized it was the only way he would be able to train full-time. His time in service changed his perspective dramatically; he was exposed to citizens totally different from himself. After his WCAP hitch is up this Fall, he wants to continue to serve his country by dedicating his intellect, physical skills, and human knowledge to going into harm’s way to help others. Even accounting for the risk, what more could a parent hope for?

It’s bad enough that you folks in sports journalism choose to exalt the wrong athletes to begin with and persist in propping them up. It’s despicable that you spend your indignation on those you otherwise ignore. Like all the parents of willful, dedicated overachievers in “minor” (your word) Olympic sports, we’ve had a sweet and intriguing journey for a decade that’s given us a lifetime of memories to savor, right under your noses, and you’ve missed every bit of it. At best, you’re enforcing your own irrelevance as to what’s truly important. At worst, you’re moneychangers in the temple.”

Next week: Response and Round Two.