And…speaking of Olympic medals, don’t you miss watching the Olympics on television at night? I have to admit, I felt kind of lost the night after they were over and I sat down to watch my usual hour of television in the evening. As I began flipping through the rather shallow list of movies on Hulu and Netflix, I felt disappointed that the best athletes had all gone home and the excitement of world competition was over.
I really wanted to hear more stories of little kids who defied all odds to become an Olympic athlete– future gold winners – and then to watch their dreams come true as they overcame their hardships and became medalist. In an age where photo finishes and thousandths of a second make a difference, these athletes had pursued a special kind of excellence, the kind that leaves you hopeful for that other race going on, the human race. So, before the Paris games fade completely from 2024, I want to reminisce for a moment about a past Olympics, the LA Olympics in 1984, when I simultaneously watched the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat all in one event, and the audience left feeling both inflated and deflated at the same time
I had boarded an Amtrak to Los Angeles with my father and my brother, a ten-day bro-trip where we were spectators to everything from windsurfing to water polo. One of the things we quickly discovered at the Olympic venues was that since we were watching the best athletes in the world, it really didn’t matter what event we witnessed or whether it was for a gold medal or last place. Each event was a fascinating cornucopia of new rules, new faces, disqualifications, spills and yes, examples of sheer determination that broke the boundaries of what humans can endure.
For example, before witnessing my first judo match I did not know that, at least in 1984, it was perfectly legal to strangle your opponent with their own judo robe. If a match found one opponent in the choke hold, they had a choice to either hit the mat and tap out or, as we later found out, do the honorable Judo thing and just pass out. Several of the wrestlers did, in fact, choose to do the honorable thing slowly drifted off into La-La Land as they were choked into submission.
When I witnessed this blacking out for the first time, I couldn’t believe it. When had the word honor by strangulation become associated with the Olympics? Had I been thrown back to a Roman coliseum where gladiators fought to the death? Sitting next to me, my father was shocked as well. Having just retired from his medical practice, and seeing the Hippocratic Oath flash before his eyes, he jumped out of his seat and had to be restrained by my brother from racing to rescue the unconscious athlete. As it turned out, the wrestler soon regained consciousness and sat up, straightening out his white robe as if he’d just exited from a washing machine.
This is the Olympics, I thought! I’ve arrived! Anthems, flags, and cold-blooded strangulations!
More stubbornness ensued as we watched the US defeat the Russians in water polo, a match that left the water blood red and flooding the swimming pool arena with a small-scale version of the Cold War. At that time there were no underwater cameras to catch blatant fouls, and all sorts of unmentionable things happened under the pool surface.
At the semi-finals for men’s soccer, Yugoslavia played Italy, and I got another taste of the furor and passion that accompanies Olympic competitions. The soccer field was surrounded by armed policeman on horseback and there was a holding tank for unruly spectators that held an eerie presence at the far end of the Rose Bowl. When Yugoslavia scored the winning goal and won 2-1, the crowd erupted around me in a wild frenzy that bordered on mass hysteria. Huge Yugoslav women who could have been Olympic shot- putters and who had never shaved, picked me up and tossed me around like a wet noodle for reasons I’m still trying to figure out. I can only guess, but I believe they thought I was some kind of Olympic party favor, or perhaps it was my clean-shaven appearance that appealed to their carnal instincts – I’m not really sure.
Surviving that, the next stop on the docket was Dodger Stadium. When we settled into our seats for baseball, an exhibition sport that year, what ensued was more like a marathon, as Chinese Taipa battled South Korea in a 14 inning no hitter. That’s right! Fourteen innings for crying out loud! If you aren’t a baseball fan, just know that the game started at noon and ended nine hours later, with most of the 56,189 fans either asleep from boredom or under the influence. Two crack pitchers at the height of their Olympic pitching careers dueled like a couple of Marvel Avengers and continued to strike out one hapless batter after another as the game dragged on all afternoon and into the evening.
As the saying goes, the game was about as exciting as watching paint dry, and the only reason anyone stayed to watch was due to an incident that happened during the seventh inning stretch. As the traditional “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” begin to play and the mostly drunken audience stood up to sing, a celebration team on the infield cut loose fifty nautical balloons into the sky, each one a vibrant color, each representing a different Olympic nation. As we stood to stretch, we looked to the sky, beholding the spectrum of balloons bolt upward, glorious symbols of freedom. Cheers echoed through the palisades of Dodger Stadium, and we settled back down believing that the refreshing release of the huge balloons would be an inspiration for the ballplayers to slam some homers and get this baseball party started.
However, as the balloons disappeared into the evening sky, one stubborn balloon, a renegade with no manners, floated back down into the stadium, and begun a leisurely circuitous trip around the infield, just out of reach of the maintenance team frantically running after it and trying to reel it in. Just as it looked like they might grab it, the balloon would rise again and hover at the top of the stadium Then, as the baseball players came back onto the field, the balloon would catch a downdraft that blew it out of its holding pattern and fall again. And each time this happened, the runaway balloon would be chased by a rowdy group of a mostly unauthorized, multi-international thugs trying to carry the balloon off as a souvenir.
And guess which nation was represented by this uncommitted, apolitical, unpledged balloon? Why, it was the United States, of course. Yes, it was our balloon up there wandering around like a lost child at a barn dance. Never mind that this baseball game, representing the quintessentially American sport, had already taxed the patience of the most diehard baseball fan, but now we had our own red, white and blue balloon essentially boycotting the game. Fortunately, a policeman shot the balloon down with a flare gun, and the most boring baseball game in history resumed, dying a slow death until the fourteenth inning, when a Japanese player hit a home run to end the game and put us all out of our misery.
After nine hours of watching the most incredible pitching duel in history, you would think the culminating crack of a baseball on a bat would have ignited the crowd but watching the American balloon float apathetically back and forth had exhausted any remaining enthusiasm in the stadium. I believe I may have heard one singular applaud in the dugout, but the crowd, who were beginning to feel the effects of their hangover, emptied out of the stadium, irritable and grumbling about how Olympic baseball had failed to inspire them.
I couldn’t help but feel, as we got up to leave, that the United States had failed on an international level, that the lone American balloon floating around Dodger Stadium that day should have been disqualified from any future balloon events on account of unsportsmanlike conduct. The misbehaving balloon that had floated about and had failed in its patriotic duty was an embarrassment to Americans, a kind of symbol for a whole lot of hot air, an inflated ego, and in my opinion, it’s behavior and attitude was just not befitting of the Olympic spirit.
I kept these thoughts to myself, however, as I shuffled out of the stadium. I could still smell a bit of leftover helium wafting through the air, an after-effect from the American balloon that had exploded and I was afraid that if I spoke, my voice would come out squeaky, perhaps an octave or two higher than normal, and a new athletic event would have to be added to the next Olympics, like the Squeaky Talkie-Walk, or maybe the Helium Pentathlon. How about Severe Weather Nautical Balloon Surfing?Yea, yea, that’s it. Surfers would be dropped from an airplane and surf through an obstacle course of nautical balloons. Oh, that would be amazing… (fading voice…)