She's Got Legs

With all deference to Florence and her Machine, the dog days are most certainly not over. 

Indeed, we are in that sub-season where both the humidity and pigskin anticipation are dense and getting denser.  I’m a runner and a baseball nut, and even I can’t escape the palpability of that “just over the horizon” vista that is opening day of the college and professional football seasons.  My fantasy football war room research is nearly completed, my Carolina Panthers broke camp injury free, my Tennessee Volunteers are…well I know that they are still playing home games on Rocky Top…not really sure what else to expect this year.  My Braves are on a roll to end all rolls.  Hope is springing eternal as we round the bend and head into a very promising sports autumn.  With the exception of that magical few weeks in spring when baseball diamonds in Florida and Arizona come to life, the madness begins marching and traditions unlike any other stir the echoes, this is my favorite time of the year.

With all of that having been said, these are the days that try men’s sports entertainment souls.  Sport is supposed to be where men go to get our reality TV fix.  Personally, I prefer for that reality to unfold on the fields of play.  Alas, this is the time of year when we get the proverbial peek behind the curtain.  I grew up in a minor league baseball locker room.  I don’t want any more said peeks.  I know what I’ll see.  It’s dank and smelly and full of men who are as broken as I am.  I get to hide from the world while I work on fixing my broken pieces.  This time of year is when our sports heroes get to bring their broken pieces to the world’s largest show and tell.

I don’t have to name names (Johnny So-and-So) or venues (Hardly worth the Knock).  Everywhere you look these days, there is a sports figure feeding the frenzy of America’s two freshly minted pastimes: Falling from grace and trying to find redemption.  I prefer to focus on the latter over the former.  Call me a sucker for a happy ending.

This brings me to last night’s sports viewing options.  Yes, there was the Braves beating the Phillies (again).  And, yes I am baseball nut who should have been watching the Braves beat the Phillies (again).  Only I didn’t.  I got caught up in ESPN’s 30 for 30 (9 for 9) “The Runner”, and not’ for nothin’, but it was really good.  I was nine (ironically) when Mary Decker had what was quite possibly the year to beat all years in middle distance competitive running.  That was 1985.  In 1984 she had what was quite definitely the year every young competitor wants to forget.  The one where you lose when you weren’t supposed to and don’t handle it well, and everyone stops to watch the man (or in this case woman) dangle on the cliff’s edge, and then loves it when she falls. 

Man did she fall. 

Like I said, I am a runner.  I’m not good enough to win any race I enter, but I’m not a plodder.  I train to get faster and run longer, and I don’t jog in place at intersections.  I stand there with my hands on my hips, looking really pissed off.  Like I said, runner.  So, I have some vague fantastical idea of what it might be like to have the year that Decker had in 85, immediately following her immortal reaction to her fall from grace at the 84 LA Olympics.       

If you missed the 30 for 30 (9 for 9) then you are probably unaware of what I am talking about.  Here’s a recap of the races in which Decker competed in 1985.  She won.  All of them.  By a lot.

And unless you are one of THOSE Oregon running people…you did not know that.  You only remember the fall, you have no clue about the redemption.  I didn’t.  For shame?  Maybe.

The honest answer is that not many of us pay attention to the “Olympic Sports” in non-olympic years and so 1985, for better or worse, didn’t matter to most. Decker’s year to remember became the proverbial tree falling in the woods.  And, here is where the story goes from good to great for me.  Decker got one more crack at Olympic gold in Seoul, Korea in 1988. She took the block in the women’s 3000 meter and we all held our breath.  The starting gun went off, the race was run.  Decker finished 8^th.  Her best finish at any Olympic games. 

How’s that good?  Good question.  My answer: it gave her story legs. 

I don’t know what it’s like to shoot for the moon and get there.  I’ve never finished first at anything.  But, I’ve worked my brains out and tried to do what is right, any time I am given the chance.  I’ve failed in spectacular fashion. I've failed in ways that only I know about.  I know what it’ like to fall down in front of everyone when the wind was at my back and I knew I was the best on the field.  I know what it’s like to succeed and have no one notice.  I know what it’s like to look back and see that one thing that you tried your hardest to achieve and was always just out of reach.  My guess is that if you spent more than a few years on this bouncing ball…you know what it’s like to be Decker too.  If you’ve got it like Phelps, then good on ya.  Seriously, go get it and don’t let go.  But, if you know what it is to fall, and then choose not to let that fall be the end of your story, then you know why Mary Decker’s story’s legs could be so much more important to the world than her once storied legs.

But, I digress.  Football anyone?