Barnes Has Shot at Ending a Drought

There are some things that are inherently American. They define us.

There’s apple pie and hot fudge sundaes. Harvest moons and Halloween. Cowboy movies and taffy pulls. Hot rods and sock hops. Fireworks and Ferris wheels.

And, of course, the Olympic shotput.

The Olympic shotput?!

Well, yes. We used to own that, too.

Check it out. Every single Olympics except two, from 1896 through 1968, was won by an American man.

Now, we haven’t won one since. LBJ was in the White House when we won our last. A Pole won in ‘72, an East German won in ’76. A Soviet won in ’80 when we weren’t there. An Italian won at Los Angeles, and an East German won at Seoul.

The best we could do in that stretch is three silvers.

What happened? Where are all the Parry O’Briens when we need them? How can a country that produced Ralph Rose, Martin Sheridan, Bud Houser, Leo Sexton, Moose Thompson, Bill Neider, Dallas Long and Randy Matson be content with a few measly silvers? Don’t we grow biceps anymore?

The short answer is football . It is the view of shotputter Randy Barnes that there are a lot of potential 70-foot shotputters in offensive lines in the NFL. Shotputters come in sizes that blot out the light if you’re standing next to them, and no football coach can resist trying to put one in shoulder pads and helmet. The coach figures a guy big enough and powerful enough to throw a hunk of iron as big as a Civil War cannonball halfway out of sight should be knocking people down somewhere. One of our Olympic silver medalists, Michael Carter, plays nose tackle for the San Francisco 49ers, no less.

“There is money in track and field--for sprinters, marathoners, milers, the FloJos and the Carl Lewises,” Barnes said. But the guys who fill the air with shot and shell are just the crowd-chasers. “There’s no glamour,” he says.

Maybe so. But it wasn’t so in Parry O’Brien’s day. Parry wouldn’t have it.

Parry was the last guy to try to bring a bit of show-biz, or carnie shtick into his act. Before Parry, the shotput was merely a boring field piece where some great white whale would show up in the ring, blow on his hands, grab the ball bearing and dump it out there like a guy getting rid of a hand grenade.

Parry made a three-act play out of it. First of all, he showed up in layers of clothing even on the hottest San Joaquin Valley nights. He peeled them off one at a time like a Minsky stripper, usually leaving a knotted towel around his neck to the last. He hefted the shot gingerly, then held it over his head like a Roman candle. He wet his neck, his hand, the ball and licked his fingers like Joe Montana getting ready to throw the bomb. Parry didn’t want any static cling. He also wanted to heighten the theater, like a juggler adding a few more plates each time talked to himself. He talked to the ball. Hamlet’s soliloquy never got more emotion. You would have thought it was the death scene from “Camille.” Garbo never milked a scene any better than O’Brien.

He made sure he got everybody’s attention. Then, he turned his back to the throwing area. He broke every facet of the putter’s code. The purists covered their eyes but, suddenly, Parry came crow-hopping and spinning in a circle until he had the centrifugal force of the spin cycle on a washing machine. Parry turned a strength sport into a speed sport.

At the time, the shotput record was in the high 50s. So, Parry made the “60-foot barrier” a mystic endeavor like the search for the Holy Grail or the lost city of Atlantis. He made it seem unattainable, illusory. Then, he broke it easily one afternoon in the Coliseum. Parry put the shotput on the A-wire.

Some said his act was merely to psych out the opposition. But, pretty soon, the Soviets, East Germans, Poles and even other Americans were skulking about with cameras to study--and copy--the O’Brien style.

Parry gave it a great run--the gold in 1952 and ‘56, the silver at Rome, and he came within inches of the bronze at Tokyo. But his successors, the record-holders who came afterward, never seemed to have the Hollywood touch.

The 70-foot mark came and went with as little fanfare as the next streetcar. O’Brien would have had them interrupting regular programming to bring you the special bulletin, but in track and field it was just footnote stuff.

E. Randolph Barnes, like W. Parry O’Brien, though, shows some flair for the dramatic. First of all, although he is five feet from it, his license plate reads “80 FEET.”

In the Seoul Olympics, with almost no international experience, Barnes stunned the track world when, after a lackluster series in the middle 60s, he suddenly uncorked, on his last throw, a mammoth Olympic-record heave of 73 feet 5 1/2 inches. Kenny Moore, writing in Sports Illustrated, called it “arguably the best come-through put in U.S. Olympic history.” Unfortunately, East Germany’s Ulf Timmermann came right back with a throw that was, unarguably, the greatest come-through put in Olympic history--a 73-8 1/4 that not only won the gold but re-broke the Olympic record.

There is a chance of a replay in the Jack in the Box Invitational Meet at UCLA on May 20.

But Timmermann or not, Randy Barnes proposes to open his campaign for the Barcelona Olympics at that meet.

Barnes is America’s best hope for a return to law and order in the shot--and the strains of “Star-Spangled Banner” over the victory stand. Young (23), burly (6-4 1/2, 290) and dedicated (he fought off the college football coaches and the lure of the pros to stay in the shotput ring), he thinks ’92 may be time to reclaim our national event.

He already holds the world indoor mark (74-4 1/4). Like O’Brien, he sleeps with his shotput at his bedside and gives himself pep talks.

We’ve lost the automobile business to Japan, the steel business to God-knows-who, the textiles to South Korea and Hong Kong. Brits and Spaniards win our golf tournaments, but maybe Randy Barnes can get his act (and ours) together and bring back the good old days, a shotput gold. It’s a start.