American Sports

When Denis Ryan arrived in Maryland in 1998, he was closing out a yearlong vacation that had beaten him down. He was nearing the end of a working holiday and sabbatical, something common among young adults in Australia. Ryan wanted to return home but felt that if he did, he would have given up his last opportunity to travel the world and see more of the United States. After getting a job in security at the local Australian Embassy, Ryan received a $2,000 grant to teach the sport he loved, Australian rules football, to schools in the area.

When Denis Ryan arrived in Maryland in 1998, he was closing out a yearlong vacation that had beaten him down. He was nearing the end of a working holiday and sabbatical, something common among young adults in Australia. Ryan wanted to return home but felt that if he did, he would have given up his last opportunity to travel the world and see more of the United States. After getting a job in security at the local Australian Embassy, Ryan received a $2,000 grant to teach the sport he loved, Australian rules football, to schools in the area.

Leonard McGrady boasts he knows more about the Nash Healey than even the man who built the legendary sports cars in the 1950s. Who could argue? Inside McGrady's barn on a sprawling estate in Aberdeen, he has collected every Nash Healey he could find over the past three decades. That amounts to 80 so far, a third of those known to still be in existence and almost one-sixth of the 506 of them that were ever built. Over there is the X-7, the only Nash Healey built with a power top that would roll down with the push of a button on the dashboard.

Soon, the most suspicious great feat in the history of American sports will be upon us. Within days, perhaps hours, Barry Bonds will hit his record 756th home run. He will swing. The ball will travel over an outfield wall. And then we'll spend the rest of our lifetimes arguing about it. We will do this because of the steroid stink surrounding Bonds, plus the assorted controversies and legal issues spawned by that stink. But there is something else, too. If Bonds were assaulting any other record, the stink would not matter so much - or maybe even at all. Here's why: Above all other signposts in our organized games, major league baseball's career home run record is deemed to be the most hallowed record in American sports.

While the TV announcers hailed the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees as one of the most storied rivalries in American sports over the weekend, I was led to a crosstown matchup unlike anything I'd seen before. In Annapolis, the U.S. Naval Academy and St. John's College met on the great lawn spread across the latter's campus. There were thousands in attendance, drinks flowing and security on hand to keep things under control. A Navy professor explained to me his understanding of the background: In an Annapolis pub 25 years ago, students from St. John's were arguing with some Midshipmen.

The Golden Age of Sports is now. Enjoy its magic, but remember that it was built on the strength, talent and courage of a multitude of 20th century athletes, some great and some less than great, but all leaving their mark in the story of the 1900s.The images flow in these pages. There is Jesse Owens, son of an Alabama sharecropper, saluting his flag after winning four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics while Hitler and his Brownshirts looked on in dismay.There is the stricken Lou Gehrig's farewell speech to an emotional crowd in Yankee Stadium.

NEW YORK -- A lot of sports writers and commentators are trying to make the case of Latrell Sprewell a racial cause celebre. Especially since the celebrated black lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, is trying to rescue Mr. Sprewell, the black basketball player who attacked his coach, P.J. Carlesimo.But this latest ugly episode in American sports has nothing to do with race. It is about the absence of law and order, due process and a single standard of justice in institutions that have been corrupted by greed and a desire to win at almost any cost.

Disney's newest feature, "The Lion King," features a frightening depiction of a stampede. But this could be only the second-scariest one of the summer.No. 1 has to be the rampaging of the experts toward the cameras and the keyboards in the wake of the O. J. Simpson case. Sort of a running of the bull.It's not enough, apparently, that two people were murdered, that two young children lost their mother, that a well-known person is accused of the crime, that his surrender to authorities was preceded by a bizarre freeway parade carried live on television.

LOS ANGELES -- As soccer's World Cup approaches, the rest of the world is riveted, but the American sports public will no doubt continue to react with a collective yawn. Why hasn't soccer fever caught on here? Theories have been offered: that soccer moms don't control the TV remote, that American television avoids sports that don't offer alluring timeouts for commercials, that soccer is too slow for an American audience, that not using arms or hands goes against our grain. I suspect the answer lies elsewhere.

Soon, the most suspicious great feat in the history of American sports will be upon us. Within days, perhaps hours, Barry Bonds will hit his record 756th home run. He will swing. The ball will travel over an outfield wall. And then we'll spend the rest of our lifetimes arguing about it. We will do this because of the steroid stink surrounding Bonds, plus the assorted controversies and legal issues spawned by that stink. But there is something else, too. If Bonds were assaulting any other record, the stink would not matter so much - or maybe even at all. Here's why: Above all other signposts in our organized games, major league baseball's career home run record is deemed to be the most hallowed record in American sports.

We probably should have known that, at some point, a commissioner sheds his business suit and actually sleeps. After all, we always knew he was a dreamer - from that lectern permanently appended to his chest, the commish has shared with us fanciful visions of collective bargaining agreements, television contracts and league expansion. But we learned last week that he has nightmares, too. And, oh, the horror, the horror. Whimpering dogs and beefy Mafioso brutes. Drugs and cheating and gambling.

While the TV announcers hailed the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees as one of the most storied rivalries in American sports over the weekend, I was led to a crosstown matchup unlike anything I'd seen before. In Annapolis, the U.S. Naval Academy and St. John's College met on the great lawn spread across the latter's campus. There were thousands in attendance, drinks flowing and security on hand to keep things under control. A Navy professor explained to me his understanding of the background: In an Annapolis pub 25 years ago, students from St. John's were arguing with some Midshipmen.

In April, American cycling guru Dave Shields completed a novel about a young man under immense pressure to cheat to win the Tour de France. Now Shields finds himself hoping that the race's real-life winner, Floyd Landis, didn't succumb to those very same sorts of pressures - to what one public policy expert calls "the cheating culture" in American sports and society. Landis' Tour de France victory was thrown into doubt yesterday when his team said he tested positive for what appeared to be unusually high testosterone levels during the race.

This isn't a good weekend for American sports patriots. There's no place to invest cheers. At the World Cup, which concludes with tomorrow's final between Italy and France, Team USA was knocked out without winning a game. At Wimbledon, which also ends tomorrow with the men's final, every American male and female competitor was eliminated before the quarterfinals. The combination of those and other recent high-profile American sports failings (World Baseball Classic, 2006 Olympic hockey, 2004 Olympic basketball, seven of the past 10 Ryder Cups, etc.)

If being a soccer fan in America is wrong, I don't want to be right. It's shameful that sports fans in this country huddle behind the provincial boundaries of a few America-centric professional sports. There's a big world out there, and most of it is focused on the World Cup right now. While you were carving out time to watch the fourth-place Orioles play the fourth-place Minnesota Twins over the weekend, you probably missed much of the drama that was playing out in Germany. Take Saturday, for instance, when Paraguay scored the only goal of the game against England and lost, 1-0 ... or when Trinidad and Tobago took a raucous victory lap after playing heavily favored Sweden to a 0-0 tie. England won on an "own goal" when a Paraguayan defender accidentally headed David Beckham's free kick past his own goalie.

LOS ANGELES -- As soccer's World Cup approaches, the rest of the world is riveted, but the American sports public will no doubt continue to react with a collective yawn. Why hasn't soccer fever caught on here? Theories have been offered: that soccer moms don't control the TV remote, that American television avoids sports that don't offer alluring timeouts for commercials, that soccer is too slow for an American audience, that not using arms or hands goes against our grain. I suspect the answer lies elsewhere.

It's opening night in the National Hockey League, otherwise known as the Headless Horseman.While winter rival basketball enjoys unparalleled overall prosperity thanks to the acknowledged marketing savvy and firm direction of NBA commissioner David Stern, the NHL stumbles along in its unique leaderless fashion, missing out on national television money and exposure while strangling itself with an anachronistic labor relations setup more attuned to the '60s...

BERLIN -- The creeping Americanization of German teen-age culture has come to this: You can now get beat up on a Berlin subway for your pair of Air Jordans. Or for an L.A. Raiders jacket.Never mind that another soccer season is under way in Germany, with the green-and-white boys of Werder Bremen again looking like the team to beat. When it comes to winning the hearts of the young and fashion-conscious, the powerhouses of the nation's favorite sport can't even beat the Cleveland Indians. Or the Charlotte Hornets.

The most famous lead in sportswriting is Grantland Rice's account of Notre Dame's football victory over Army in 1924: "Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. "In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden." What would he write today? "Cool as the other side of the pillow, Brady Quinn avoided a big USC rush to hit Jeff Samardzija on a deep pass as Notre Dame fans shouted, `He ... could ... go ... all ... the ... way.'" Or something like that.

Leonard McGrady boasts he knows more about the Nash Healey than even the man who built the legendary sports cars in the 1950s. Who could argue? Inside McGrady's barn on a sprawling estate in Aberdeen, he has collected every Nash Healey he could find over the past three decades. That amounts to 80 so far, a third of those known to still be in existence and almost one-sixth of the 506 of them that were ever built. Over there is the X-7, the only Nash Healey built with a power top that would roll down with the push of a button on the dashboard.