Here’s hoping you’re glad the Steelers won. Actually, it was refreshing that the “Super Bowl” was truly super. Blowouts can be particularly tiresome. Then there’s the half time show that always has me wondering if I will regret watching. Remember the famous wardrobe malfunction? Puh-leeease . . . nothing ‘malfunctioning’ about it. It was carefully orchestrated to bring on LOTS of publicity, which it did. Can’t convince me otherwise. This year I felt guilty liking Springsteen. I just can’t help myself, Clarence Clemons, Stevie Van Zandt and Springsteen STILL rocking and sounding great made me feel young. Hate the politics, love the music. Sorry.

Of course commercials are usually a highlight, but not so much this year. There were a couple of stand outs in my mind. Some of you may not have seen the one that surprised ME the most. Since it was bought in local markets rather than nationally because of contract agreements with Budweiser. Miller Beer bought one second ads all over the country, and I’m guessing they got the most bang for the buck. Watching last night, it was the one commercial I thought “Hey, did I miss something?”. More subliminal than anything else, a shot of a man standing in front of boxes of Miller Beer with a lighted logo just opens his arms and says “High life!”. One second while expensive, still got the message across. The big money commercials that ‘owned me’ again this year are the E-Trade ones with the talking baby (s). You gotta love it. What were your favorites?

Now on to the STEALERS of the week. One word . . . . Daschle.

Daschle says he’s “deeply embarrassed”. Ya, right. I’d be ‘embarrassed’ too, but for completely different reasons.

Amidst all this chaos . . . God loves me . . .

Well, it happens near the end of every college football season, so I don’t know why I’m surprised. It’s all about winning, you know. And if the w’s don’t out weigh the l’s, especially to historical rivals, no matter what kind of PERSON you are, you’re going to get the pink slip. Just once I’d like to be shocked for a different reason than the fact that a head coach get’s the boot. The last time I checked, college kids are there for an education for life. True, life is not fair, but 18-22 is when these ‘kids’ make the leap into adulthood. They’ve already had their fair share of the ‘win at all costs’ mentality. As a leader, why not use the opportunity to be a healthy example of something more important?

Just once I’d like to hear a multi-million dollar salaried (fired/resigned/departing) coach use his press conference to say something like this:

Thank you for coming. This has been a wild ride. I had no idea that the success of the football team was the number of w’s we put in the score column at the end of the year. Oh yes, I like to win games, but I thought this was about the number of w’s at the end of each of the players lives. I’m sorry that the school doesn’t find this as important. I got into coaching because I love football, and I love kids. The fact that it came with all this money was a nice plus, of course. My plan now is to take all this money, take care of my family, sock the rest away, and coach football on the side. I’m looking now for an underprivileged town in my state that wouldn’t mind having an experienced coach who wants to help kids learn to work as a team, as hard as they can, to become the best people that they can. And oh yeah, we’ll play football along the way. My salary? That’ll be one dollar a year. You know, If I’d thought I was getting into the cut-throat world of professional football back when I started, I never would have come to a college to coach. I’d have gone to the NFL.

But, that’s a fantasy world. I sometimes frustrate people because here in my own state, I am for whichever team has the most at stake. That means I fluctuate somewhat as a fan. I got this way because I’d had just about enough of the ‘new’ football mentality here in the southern United States. When I was growing up, it was fun to root for my team! But fans now seem to have morphed into insulting the other team as much as possible. Put that in the south, and it erupts into knife fights and bar brawls. . .over college football. . . go figure.

Amidst all this chaos . . . God loves me . . .

America is a funny place. Our inhabitants have a morbid desire to see those who are on top knocked from their lofty perch. Conversely we also love to see the fallen rise again like Phoenix from the ash heap…..assuming that their rise is accompanied by humility and change. We all know numerous fallen ones who have risen again with more narcissism and arrogance than they possessed before the fall, but I will not sully this story by mentioning their sorry names.

In the 50′s there was a comic book character named Ozark Ike. He was a mythical and prodigious character with a toothy grin, a shock of blond hair coming out from under the bill of his hat and an Adonis like body. His ability was head and shoulders above the opponent’s players in every mythical game he played. In the 1999 major league player draft, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, drafting number one, selected such a player….Joshua Holt Hamilton. Josh was a chiseled jawed 18 year old kid with a “can’t miss…best ever” tag that earned him a $3.96 million signing bonus…pretty good for a North Carolina country boy. It seemed like a sure thing for the Devil Rays….no risk here….Josh was the cleanest of the clean cut. As a baseball player he was the bluest of the blue chips, a highly decorated high school outfielder-pitcher whose fastball was clocked at 96 m.p.h.. Following graduation he was named High School Player of The Year by Baseball America and Amateur Player of The Year by USA Baseball. Hello minor leagues, next stop, “The Bigs”

But, as often occurs, a not-so-funny thing happened on his way to the “The Show”, as the major leagues are traditionally and affectionately know. He spent his first two minor league seasons with three different Devil Ray farm teams finishing a successful 2000 season with the Charleston River Dogs of the South Atlantic “Sally” League. Before the start of the next season, a car driven by his mother and in which he and his father were passengers was struck by a dump truck. His recuperation cut his 2001 and 2002 seasons short and nagging injuries forced him to end his 2002 AA Orlando Rays’ season on the DL. For a young man who had never tried drugs or had even a sip of alcohol until 2001, the mixture of free time, loneliness, excessive money and a growing penchant for experimentation during the 2001 and 2002 seasons proved to be the devil’s brew. With addictions growing, his habitual tardiness to games and practices and subsequent AWOL periods from the team led him to forgo the complete 2003 season. His hopes of returning to the Devil Rays in the Spring of 2004 were thwarted by his failure to successfully pass multiple drug tests. He was completely out of baseball from 2004 through the summer of 2006, dropping out of numerous attempts at rehab over these years. At the worst and in his own words here is where Josh Hamilton was in 2005.

“When I think of those terrible times, there’s one memory that stands out. I was walking down the double-yellow of a two-lane country highway outside Raleigh when I woke up in a trance. I was so out of it I had lost consciousness, but my body had kept going, down the middle of the road, cars whizzing by on either side. I had run out of gas on my way to a drug dealer’s house, and from there I left the truck and started walking. I had taken Klonopin, a prescription anti-anxiety drug, along with whatever else I was using at the time, and the combination had put me over the edge. It’s the perfect example of what I was….a dead man walking.”

In June of 2006, after only 8 months of sobriety, MLB allowed Hamilton to return to the Devil Rays. Having not protected him on their 40 man roster he was lost to the Cincinnati Reds in the Rule 5 draft which prohibits teams from protecting players who may have a possibility of making another major league team. Cincinnati subsequently traded him to the Texas Rangers where he began the 2008 season. At mid season this year he has 117 hits, 21 home runs, 95 runs batted in and is hitting .310. With these stats he is well within striking distance of trading the Crown Royal liquor of his wayward days for the coveted “Triple Crown” of hitting. On Tuesday of this week in the Home Run Hitting Contest at the All-Star Game Josh Hamilton put on a hitting clinic the likes of which has never been seen. He hit an almost unbelievable 28 home runs in the first round of the contest which precedes the AS Game each year. He was out hit 5-3 in the finals and did not win…but he won something more important…the hearts of every man woman and child who witnessed this young man’s feats and heard his story. An additional heart warming aspect of the story is that he asked his coach when he was 13, 70 year old Clay Counsil, to pitch to him during the contest. His smile had returned as had the skills he almost wasted with the three plus years of abuse of his body. If you saw the event and heard his story and were not touched almost if not totally to tears…check your pulse and call 911.

In late September of 2005 in the throws of a drug induced stupor and without his truck which had been taken by a drug dealer he placed a call to his wife Katie, whom he had married during a brief period of sobriety during 2004. Katie took him, with 26 vile and pervasive tattoos covering his body, gaunt and in dire need of a fix, to his grandmother Holt’s door step….the same grandmother he kissed before each and every baseball game through his high school years. It was her straight talk and convincing conversation of her’s and God’s love for him that caused him to return to Christ and the faith of his youth. He is now unabashedly and unashamedly open with his story and his testimony of faith. Aware of the temptations and risks posed to addicts he joins with Major League Baseball and the Texas Rangers in protecting himself from these demons as he faces the pressures of major league baseball’s daily grind.

Joshua Holt Hamilton is the centerpiece of a beautiful story of a disastrous fall and subsequent regeneration and redemption, with the same forgiveness offered to all who are apart from Christ and want to return. Josh would, undoubtedly, point to Christ as the centerpiece instead of himself. I pray that Josh is able to continue being salt and light to an unregenerate world. Please join me in this prayer…and watch this “Super Natural” athlete light up the scoreboard.

Most moviegoers and all purist baseball fans over 30 years old know who, or rather what, Wonderboy is. It is the bat used by Roy Hobbs, aka Robert Redford, in the 1984 sports flick “The Natural.” As the story goes, Hobbs father was killed by lightning that also felled an ash tree from which Hobbs hand carved a bat that he used to become a prolific hitter and baseball hero. Great story and wonderful movie! Maybe I’m the only one interested in both the evolutionary history of the baseball bat and what part it played in the growing up of this “aged kid”. If so then I’ll be satisfied with having a good time writing what follows. If not, and the following is interesting to you, then I’ll be pleased.

During the mid 1800′s, the early years of baseball, players carved, or had others carve, their bats from various wood species. Bats took on various shapes; flat, oval, long, short with each being unique to its owner and protector. The protector part was important, because a broken cudgel meant extensive time with ax and knife preparing for the next game. To bring uniformity to the game during the years leading up to 1869, rules as to size of the bat were developed. They could be no longer than 43 inches and no wider in diameter than 2.50 inches but could be as heavy as desired and nature would produce a wood from which to carve.

Bat production changed forever in 1884 when Louisville Eclipse’s star player Pete Browning broke his prized bat in the middle of an important game. In the crowd on that fateful day was John Hillerich….if you are a baseball aficionado you probably just said Ahha, in recognition of the name. After the game John took Browning back to his father’s woodworking shop and literally “turned out”… on his lathe…a new, perfectly formed smooth bat for the thrilled player. A legendary bat company was birthed on that day. Frank Bradsby , a junior executive in the company was later made a partner and the manufacturer of the Louisville Slugger , Hillerich and Bradsby went on to become the premier bat company of all time.

Changes have taken place over the years, some quite significant. In 1893 the maximum diameter was increased to 2.75 inches. Other bat companies sprang up over the years; Spalding and its Mushroom Bat in 1897, Wright & Ditson, Athens Georgia’s Hanna Bat Company with its Batrite in 1911, Rawlings and later Adirondack, maker of Bobby Thompson’s bat with which he hit “The Shot Heard Round the World” on October 1, 1951 to defeat the Dodgers in the NL playoff.

In the 1950′s “bottle bats” with large grips used by Nellie Fox, Richie Ashburn, Ted Kluzewski and the great Jackie Robinson were quite common. They eventually gave way to the thinner and more whippy handles used by Yankee greats Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Wooden bats have remained much the same for the last 50 years.

Over the last half decade there have been three notable exceptions to the somewhat standard ash wooden bat. Adirondack attempted, unsuccessfully, to market a laminated bat some fifty years ago. Minnie Minoso, one of only two players to play in the Major Leagues in five decades, had a bat made of banana wood. Baseball lore contends that if broken his bat would “heal” overnight when he soaked it in water. In recent days maple has been used instead of ash by some non-traditional makers. Maple bats are now undergoing a high degree of scrutiny because of the danger the present to as they frequently shatter and fly indiscriminately toward players, umps and fans alike.

The most notable and lasting change occurred in 1970 when the metal bat was introduced, first to softball and later to youth, high school and college programs and also to some levels of the professional game. The “crack of the bat” was being challenged by the “clank of the bat”….UGGHHH!

The two main differences between comparable wood and aluminum bats are weight and breakage…and breakage means money. Cost is the only thing that keeps them around today because they do bring an added level of danger to the game. The lighter weight makes bat speed greater and that’s what causes balls to be hit harder, faster and further, thus increasing the chance of defensive players being injured by a batted ball.

Bat breakage, however, provided me a great learning experience during my youth. Bats were hard to come by, therefore, we treasured and protected them. If you owned one you were truly “the man”. You were included in any game because you had the stick. We were taught early to “keep the trade mark up” when we hit. This caused the ball to be hit on the grain’s edge because the trade mark was placed flat to the grain by the manufacturer. We always watched a hitter to make sure he gripped the bat properly so as to protect it from breakage. They would, however, invariably break and leave us with a dilemma….find another, quit the game or fix the crack.

My Father learned from his youthful days spent in poverty during the Great Depression, to fix most anything with very few tools and even fewer repair materials. He taught me to pry the crack open, put some wood glue in it, place 1-3 screws in key locations to draw the crack closed with a screw driver….batteries not included…or required, file the heads off of the screws, tape it tight with electrical tape and let it cure. Was the bat perfect…NO. Would kids today go through that time consuming process…NO again. Consequently today’s youth miss a great deal because of their access to an expanse of equipment born of affluence and lack of ingenuity fostered by the same. Before you paint me with the “it was better in the good old days” brush consider a few things. Today do you ever see bats, gloves and baseballs left lying around or in the yard to get rained on? Probably…but not so at my childhood home! Dad didn’t have to tell us to protect our much used equipment either….we knew its value. A ball stolen by a stray dog, or soaked by rain or a warped bat postponed or called off the game. This was not good! Have you ever taught your son to sew up a baseball, fix a cracked bat or sew the strap on a mask? I bet not and……. I rest my case.

Hopefully the circuitous route I just traveled did not diminish the true intent of the story. What I learned from a broken bat and my Dad sticks with me even today. I still live by Dad’s adage of, “fix it up, wear it out, use it up or do with out.” Thanks again Dad.

Our Father raised my brother and me to play and love baseball. Our younger sister, being thoroughly immersed in conversation about the intracicies of the game and forced to watch her brothers play, grew to also appreciate the national pastime. Most all who have played baseball for any period of time have developed an understandable, albeit strange, fascination if not love, for the tools necessary to play the game. I am a prime example of one whose glove from childhood is one of my prized possessions. It’s tattered, somewhat dried out, but still perfectly formed for catching a sharp line drive or a hot grounder hit back up the middle. The difference from years past is that in my mind I still see myself performing these feats but my body brings reality to my dream rapt thoughts. Now days it’s all I can do to protect my manhood from a sharp line drive from the plastic bat of a three year old grandson.

But I still love my 50 year old “rag” bought in 1958. It is a Rawlings XPG3 infielder’s glove! I used it to catch fast pitch softball for years. My brother then played 4 years of college baseball at Tennessee using this masterpiece of glove making skill. Years later one of my son’s played shortstop for 4 years at Furman University, making All Southern Conference in his Senior year, also using “Ty”, as my glove had come to be affectionately known. Ty has come full circle as I now use it when I pitch to my grandkids. Ty is again useful and happy.

Over the life of the glove I have had it completely reconditioned at the Rawlings factory three times. Each time the deerskin lining was replaced, seams were re-sewn and laces replaced where needed. The last time I sent it back for refurbishing, the factory rep offered me any glove in the Rawlings catalog if I would let them have Ty for their museum. This was an offer I couldn’t refuse…….but I did. Once you name a glove you surely can’t discard it. It would be like giving away a child. Had I weakened and made the proposed trade, I would most likely have been banished to baseball purgatory. But since I remained strong…..my decision was never in question….I can still sit here tonight in my recliner , pounding my fist into this leather relic and dreaming of diving to my right like Brooks Robinson in the ‘69 series, backhanding the one hopper and throwing to Boog Powell at first. Yeeeere Out the ump sings out. I may be a relic too, just like my glove, but I can still dream like a child.

In writing about Big Brown in the past, the Brown team has impressed me as a well oiled, albeit arrogant machine. The brazen attitude of Rick Dutrow could be entertaining at times much like Muhammad Ali in his prime. After all, as fate would have it, Dutrow was lucky enough to be in the presence of the horse of a lifetime by track standards, and I was willing to forgive a little ‘brassiness’ about him . . . until yesterday.

Dutrow has taken what’s to be expected after losing a race, that is: hindsight analysis/coulda, shoulda, woulda, and since he can’t put his finger on the reason, decided to point his finger instead. It’s a little like watching a third grader lose a game, only he’s a grown man involved in ‘the sport of kings’.

It’s one thing to re-strategize, find the weak spots, fix them if you can, and go on from there. It’s quite another to blast a fellow team member in the press over and over to anyone with a microphone. Especially when he was by Dutrows own calculations “fabulous” as long as his mount was winning races. Dutrow not only blamed Kent Desormeaux publicly for “losing the Belmont”, but called for the owners to get another jockey for future races. What a jerk. No wonder none of the other trainers OR owners like him. It seems he has no discretion. His behavior would be acceptable, even ’part of the show’ in  NASCAR/WRESTLING circles, but this is Thoroughbred Horse Racing. This is a sport where he is out of his class in the quality department. He’s a bigger horses rear end than Big Brown, hands down.

Get over it, Dutrow. Your, IEAH’s, Desormeaux’s, OUR  horse lost. Race another day.

Amidst all this chaos . . . God loves me . . .

Well unfortunately, 31 and counting as to the number of years since America’s love affair with horses gave us a Triple Crown winner. I had such high hopes for Big Brown. But it was a wonderful race! Besides Casino Drive being scratched and Brown coming in last, there were no accidents & everyone walked away. . . I just really wanted BB to pull it off. Oh well, next year perhaps.

I wonder how the Peta people will handle this one since there were no ‘Eight Belles’ incidents? Will they recognize Kent Desormeaux as the expert that he is? If this was a cruel sport, and all about money, he never would have pulled him up. He was protecting his horse (yes, he’s just  the jockey, but in his heart it’s his  horse), not his investment. He had invested in a ‘win’ for himself, his family, and his boss. A desperate man with dollar signs in his eyes might have kept trying to push Brown to the wire. In essence, a real live ‘beating a dead horse’ spectacle!

Peta was so callous when they insisted that there be an investigation into the ‘Eight Belle’s incident & bar her unfortunate young jockey from racing. . . let’s see how vocal they are when exactly the opposite scenario takes place. Incidentally, that jockey had no way of knowing anything was about to happen with Eight Belles. He did everything right that day & my heart still goes out to him.

Just like BB in the race today, there was little if any warning that he wasn’t up to the task. In the meantime, there are two more races that his owners/trainer are considering. The Travers Stakes on Aug. 23 at Saratoga in upstate New York, then the Breeders’ Cup before retiring to stud.

Whether Big Brown ever races again or not, he’s a superior athlete. He has such a nice long breeding career ahead of him, maybe he’ll sire our next Triple Crown-er!

Amidst all this chaos . . . God loves me . . .

You know I can’t let you forget . . . Belmont Stakes is tomorrow!! Get the yard done, clean the garage early, have the vacuuming done before lunch, whatever your Saturday routine is, just do it so you don’t miss the The Big Brown show! All the pre-race coverage is going to be terrific. Besides helping you know what each horse is capable of, it will give you the back-stories on the jockeys/owners/trainers. Everybody has a tale to tell, and not one   is un-interesting.

Matthew Stockman / Getty Images

Photo by Monica Lopossay

Jockey Kent Desormeaux after The Preakness, feeling jubilant!

My prediction remains,  that BB’s only real  threat is in Casino Drive. And even he would be a giant  upset. While there doesn’t seem to be an ‘Alydar’ nipping at Brown’s heels like ‘Affirmed’ had the last time we had a Triple Crown winner, it is still guaranteed to be thrilling. Think about it, it’s been 30 years since we had one. It’s like watching an eclipse or a comet passing. DON’T MISS IT. If there is  an upset, even that will bring on the chills! Either way, I bet you’ll never forget it.

GO BIG BROWN!

Amidst all this chaos . . . God loves me . . .

Today was the day I look forward to all week…grass cutting day.  Yep, you read me right, grass cutting day. In the deep summer when the heat is intense, this day comes at least twice a week. I have a bermuda lawn that I aerate and top dress each spring.   It makes the lawn smooth so I can cut it to about 3/8 inch high like a golf course without scalping it.  I like cutting grass because it provides instant gratification….and it produces beauty and neatness and order.  I can hardly wait until early Sunday morning so I can stand at the edge of the dew covered carpet like lawn as the sun glistens off  the freshly mowed blades and observe my fine tuning of God’s creation.  I learned to enjoy this activity from my Dad.  That’s really the reason I enjoy it so much.  I feel like I am walking with him when I do it…and I hear him saying, “it looks great”.  Great was his favorite word. He was the most positive person I have ever known.   He was indefatigable…he probably didn’t know what the word meant or may have never even heard it spoken, but he surely defined it.  If you look up the word in the dictionary his picture is there.

I learned lawn construction and maintenance from Dad.  I learned it at a time when sodding didn’t exist, a push reel mower was the tool of choice and weed control was archaic compared to today.  Now there are weed specific chemical applications. Trimec for broad leaf weeds, Weed-B-Gone for a wide spectrum of nasty little green things, Snapshot to keep weeds out of shrub areas and Round Up if you want to kill everything that’s green in sight.  In those days Dad would say, “I see dandelions (or crab grass, or clover), let’s go dig ‘em up.  I learned that in the spots where a dog would urinate the dandelions would not grow. Eureka, I have a great thought! Why don’t we……….OK, OK,  so that wasn’t such a great an idea, but you have to give me credit for ingenuity.

Dad played baseball in the yard with my brother and me.  The play was interrupted frequently by Dad bending over and pulling a weed.  He’d give it a sideways twist and a shake to pull it out by the roots so it wouldn’t grow back.   Crabgrass was the most insidious gremlin weed that we had to deal with.   When the heat came after Springtime had turned to sultry Summer, this weed would begin growing and seem to explode almost overnight. It was a daily battle trying to eradicate it during the growing season.  What was unusual was the glee Dad experienced when he pulled crabgrass.  It was almost like by pulling a clump up he was doing something great for mankind. As he got older I would watch him search for this green enemy as he walked to the mailbox to retrieve the mail or the newspaper. He would take a few steps, stop and pull up a weed, straighten up and repeat it 20 or more times on a 200 foot mailbox round trip.   It’s ironic that something that caused him so much consternation brought him so much pleasure.  I guess it’s like sweet and sour pork….or icee hot….or driving on the parkway…or parking on the driveway….it seems to make no sense.  All I know is that he loved doing it.   Guess what?   My grandkids now say “Granddaddy would you please just pitch to me and not pull those weeds?” I guess I’m just like him…and that ain’t so bad, as a matter of fact I’m pretty pleased to be even a little bit like him

Dad has been helping God take care of the baseball field in heaven for over a decade. I really miss him.   Is there crabgrass in heaven?   You thought I’d never get to the point didn’t you?   My belief is yes…crabgrass does exist in heaven.   We know of God’s desire for our happiness there and as much pleasure as my Dad got pulling that stuff up, I know God has some around if only for Daddy.   Pick away Pop…I’ll help you again when I get there.

The debate over the upcoming Summer Olympics, including President Bush’s attendance, is likely to intensify as the time for sporting competition between nations draws nearer. Part of the verbal jousting is purely political, emanating from the intense competition for the presidency. Other protests are broader in nature focusing on very real concerns that may be tangential to the Olympics, but which the Games rightly serve to bring to the public discourse.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and the global broadcast of the man staring down the progressing tank, served as a catalyst, bringing human rights protests to the minds of the world. Since that eventful period the revelation of China’s abuse of Christians, dissenting nationals and their own public officials who don’t fall in line with communist beliefs has increased geometrically.

The tension that often provides the yen to the yang of such abuses is the economic reality that China provides cheap goods to other global buyers, including the US. First, this cheapness in reality is very costly to us because it causes a tremendous imbalance in our foreign trade. Further, there is another large and somewhat invisible cost that we pay for the defective materials and often significantly dangerous medical products made in China. This reminds me of this adage in a local store when I was a kid… “the stench of poor quality remains after the taste of low price is gone.” But the economic component of this issue is a discussion for another day.

Even though relatively impervious to global opinions, China will doubtless continue to put their best foot forward as they attempt to discount global outrage for their utter disregard for treating people in a humane manner and even supporting or participating in human slaughter. (I struggle with the term “human rights” because of the growing list of things that political correctness deems that all people are “entitled to.”) They will “stage” the locations that visitors will be able to see, control the residents the media is able to interview and threaten their own people with imprisonment, or worse, for “operating outside of the sampan” so to speak.

These egregious situations and deceptive actions are eerily reminiscent of another era and Olympiad. As the Berlin Games of 1936 (often called the Nazi Olympics) approached there was a heated global debate about Hitler’s growing power and intentions to use the Games to punctuate his worldview of Aryan superiority. This fomented a major conflict between Avery Brundage, Chairman of the International Olympic Committee and other influential athletic leaders in the US. In a trip to Germany to confirm his view that Hitler would not prevent Jewish athletes from competing and would abide by IOC principles, he was dazzled by Germany’s completely staged show of conciliation and as a result thwarted US sentiment to boycott the Olympics. Hitler did not follow through with his commitments and only one half-Jewish German was permitted to compete. America’s Jesse Owens, a black sprinter, presented the Feuhrer with a speedy slap in the face by winning 4 gold medals, shattering Hitler’s position of Aryan superiority.

There are obvious and eerie similarities between the two situations….humane treatment abuses and deceptive practices designed to obfuscate their abuse, oppressive governments and conflict over participation by the US team and US officials. Hitler’s actions were a precursor to the holocaust, the most dastardly act of destruction and human abuse in modern history. Are the similarities between 1936 Berlin and 2008 Beijing strong enough to predict similar acts from the Chinese. Maybe not, but they are great enough to warrant more than lip service to confrontation of the Chinese government. With their massive population and growing productive capabilities China is truly a world force to be reckoned with in the years ahead. Their growing accumulation of wealth at the expense of the US and the inability of rickshaws to fly are probably the only things keeping them from flexing their muscles on the world stage today. As the Olympics approach and participation debate continues, remember Berlin in 1936, and also heed the words of Will Rogers who said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”