With Lewis Missing, the Long Jump Show Belongs to Myricks

Same old story. Same as the ’84 Olympics. Big track event in Los Angeles. Big long jump. Big rewards to anybody who could break the world record.

Carl Lewis passed.

“Poor Carl,” promoter Al Franken said after Sunday’s Jack in the Box Invitational at UCLA, the sarcasm dripping like juice from a Jack in the Box taco. “Poor guy said he was just too tired to compete. He’d already made three or four jumps in the last month or two.”

Yep, Al, the human body can only endure so much.

They were offering $500,000 to anybody who could break Bob Beamon’s 21-year-old record, the DiMaggio 56-game hitting streak of track and field.

It was a wildly out-of-proportion promotion, a Franken monster.

Aside from the obvious publicity value, the real reason they did it was to give Lewis enough incentive to really make a serious bid for this record, once and for all, before Carl gets to be too old and his legs start to go and his flat-top turns snowy white.

But Lewis decided not to come, even though Franken would have forked over 20 grand appearance money to him, record or no. So, without cool Carl in the pits, the event turned out to be the pits. Nobody came close. Nobody ever comes close.

Oh, four-time Olympian Larry Myricks fooled around and fouled around with the legend of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches. He had a legal jump of 27-11 1/2 to take first place and went into the “high 28s,” by his own estimation, on a couple of his fouls, a couple of which he thought might not have been fouls.

“A couple of people in the stands told me they weren’t fouls,” Myricks said, maybe wondering just how eager the sponsors were to shell out that stack of cash.

Mike Powell made a run at it, too, orchestrating the crowd, clapping for himself at the start of the runway, Willie Banks style, trying to work up a lather. Didn’t help.

“It would have helped to put that money on a table at the end of the runway and then say, ‘Here it is, $500,000!’ ” Powell said, explaining the hidden secrets of track and field’s motivation.

Actually, the money was going to be paid off like a lottery, in installments over 20 years.

“Maybe I’d have only gotten $20,000 or so the first year,” Myricks said, “but I’ll bet you it wouldn’t have taken me long to make a lot more than $20,000 if I’d broken that record.”

Not 20 years, for sure. More like 20 weeks.

“Maybe not even 20 weeks,” Myricks said.

Beamon was there, dressed in a suit, working for cable television. ESPN, doing a live telecast, went so far as to invite viewers to make 95-cent toll calls, phoning in their opinions as to whether or not this would be the day Beamon’s record fell.

Eighty-three percent voted no.

Proving once again that 17% of any given population can turn out to be seriously stupid.

Beamon played along, being a good sport about the whole thing.

Asked afterward if he had been worried about the record while watching Myricks, Powell and the others jumping, Beamon nodded and said: “Always worried. Always worried.”

Yes sirree, Bob. Sure thing, babe.

Without Carl Lewis on the premises, the Jack in the Box clown had a better chance of springing 29-3 than anybody else around.

“If Carl had been here, it might have motivated everybody to do better,” Beamon said.

Then again, Myricks might have done it. Nobody thought anybody would high jump eight feet, or pole vault 20. Records fall, standards rise.

“Somebody’s going to beat Beamon,” Myricks said. “Might be me. Could have been me today. Stranger things have happened.”

For his part, wily Dr. Franken already is working on new inventions.

“What they ought to have from now on,” he said, “is an eight-and-20 incentive for every big meet. Bonuses for anybody who high jumps eight feet or vaults 20 feet. Give them something to shoot at.”

We probably can expect such a thing for the Sunkist indoor meet in January, then. Incentives, that’s the ticket. Love them incentives.

How about half a million smackers for anybody who runs 100 meters in eight-something.

What about a cool mil if somebody breaks the three-minute mile?

Or hey, maybe a blank check for the first person to run a steeplechase event and make it even remotely interesting.

Here’s one more idea we had:

Let’s offer Carl Lewis $20,000 to long jump in Los Angeles sometime soon.

Then, just before he jumps, everybody get up and leave.