Lewis Did It All, and for Many That’s Not Good Enough

Will somebody please tell me what Carl Lewis did to deserve what he’s getting from the American press and public?

Wait a minute, let me guess. He 1) ran over a dog, three kittens and a crowded schoolyard crossing in a pickup truck; 2) voted Communist, 3) spied for the Bulgarian secret police, 4) stole the Mona Lisa, 5) shot Santa Claus, 6) endorsed cigarette smoking on public transportation.

Maybe he did all of the above.

Whatever. This is not the young man who did what only one other man in the history of track and field ever did--win four gold medals in the Olympics. It can’t be that one.

This is not the young man who is good to his mother, polite to strangers, minds his own business and is, certifiably, one of the greatest athletes who ever lived.

This can’t be the Carl Lewis who is a functioning capitalist, who plays by the rules, contributes to charity and who seized an American flag and trotted around the Olympic track with his three teammates at the Coliseum last summer.

Can’t be the same fellow. That Carl Lewis would have been given a ticker-tape parade down Broadway, the keys to the city, a reception at the White House.

I mean, that’s what they did for the last guy, Jesse Owens, who did what Carl Lewis did. Right?

That’s what they always do for a guy who takes apart the Olympic Games like these guys did, right? People shower them with job offers, put their pictures on cereal boxes, name streets after them, sculpt statues of them.

Certainly, they are beloved public figures like Babe Ruth or Pete Rose or Joe Namath or Knute Rockne or somebody. This is America, right?

I mean, the guy wouldn’t be the subject of a vicious whispering campaign, the object of hostile press notices? They wouldn’t, for heaven’s sakes, boo him, now, would they?

What’s going on here? Have I got the wrong country?

First of all, what did the man do? I mean, have I got the wrong guy?

Didn’t he win the 100-meter run in 9.99, the best Olympic time ever at sea level? Didn’t he win the 200 in Olympic-record time of 19.80. Didn’t he win the long jump, tying the longest Olympic jump ever at sea level?

I mean, what do you want, guys?! You want him to cure the common cold, multiply loaves and fishes, free the slaves, raise the dead?

I mean, what did the man do? Let’s hear it!

The last time I looked, he was standing at attention on the victory stand, his hand over his heart while the anthem was being played. He wasn’t yawning, pouting, sneering. He was wearing shoes. He looked kind of proud, for crying out loud. Maybe that’s where he went wrong. He should have said he was busy.

It’s hard to please some people. But Carl Lewis, for some reason, offended the flower of world journalism and, for all the good his four gold medals have done him to date, he might as well have gone 2 for 4 in his Olympic events.

But, if they treat him this way in victory, imagine what they would have done if he had lost. He’d have had to change his name.

It’s an American tradition to give the accused, any accused, a chance to confront his accusers and defend himself. At least, it used to be.

So, I put a call in to this public enemy to see if he had anything to say for himself.

In any court of law, most of what has been said about Carl Lewis would be thrown out as irrelevant, immaterial, inadmissible and hearsay.

The bill of particulars would pretty quickly narrow down to the charge that he passed up four chances to crack the world and Olympic record in the long jump at the Los Angeles Games last summer. The fact that his first jump that day was good enough to win the gold medal by a foot never entered the thinking of the crowd who booed him.

“People take no notice of the fact I was on a four-gold medal program,” Lewis said. “I had only won one to that time. I had run two heats in the 200 that day. I had this soreness in my groin. It had grown cold in the Coliseum. The long-jump final was delayed because of the hammer throw. The Olympic Games are not a time for record tries, and the conditions were such that day that a try at a record so remote and of such magnitude as the long jump was completely out of the question.”

Wasn’t the successor to Jesse Owens obligated to go for more than the gold, to go for history? Carl Lewis, who will be in the long jump field at the Times/Kodak Indoor Games at the Forum Friday night, thinks not. “You must remember Jesse Owens was not that well known before his Games (Berlin 1936). Times were different then. He did not have the media involvement I had to deal with. He did not, in a real sense, have the pressure on him.

“There’s a lot more to it. Jesse had a hard time supporting himself and his family. He had a struggle and he had to put up with criticism, too. His legend grew as people realized what a thing he had done.”

But, didn’t Lewis feel snubbed, if not insulted, at being passed over as sportsman of the year by the editors of Sports Illustrated and as sportsman of the year by the U.S. Olympic committee?

“I think the press has portrayed me as something I am not. I think the public has perceived me as they portray me. I am perceived as arrogant. I am not. I am positive. I do not deal in negatives. I am not rude. I am not an arrogant person. I have known a lot of arrogant journalists. But I have never been one to disregard journalists. They don’t offend me. I don’t know why I offend them.”

Probably because it’s no longer enough to run faster, jump farther, or train harder, you also have to talk better, dance nicer and be kinder and spend time with anyone who wants you to.

When people come along who do all that, of course, then we burn them at the stake.