Enough Goodwill, He Needs to Sell a Whole Lot of Tickets in Seattle

Apart from being lucky in love, transcending in importance that which is earthly, Ted Turner hasn’t been enjoying the greatest fortune.

His basketball team, the Atlanta Hawks, is consigned to the water closet. And his baseball team, the Atlanta Braves?

Please don’t discuss them while the children are in the room.

Ted promoted the first Goodwill Games in the Soviet Union, and the show laid an egg big enough for an omelet that would feed Grozny.

If he doesn’t strike up a friendship with Jane Fonda, life for Ted is a failure. Jane has him going to a gym to work out, easing the anxiety attendant to promoting his second Goodwill Games, this time in Seattle, beginning July 20.

If you will put your history together, you will find that the United States skipped the Olympics in Moscow in 1980. The Soviets countered by skipping the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984.

A hawk turned dove, Turner is dismayed. By his account, he is walking in Moscow on a winter day, watching babushkas shovel snow. It occurs to Ted, through a method of cerebrating never revealed, that folks over there are no different than those here.

Of course, he never has watched babushkas shovel snow in Beverly Hills, but he still is inspired to bring the nations, among others, together in sports, making a deal with the Soviets to host the Goodwill Games in Moscow in 1986.

Poor Ted. For his concern for humanity, he blows $25 million, showing the rising cost of goodwill.

But Ted is game. He brings the production back this year to Seattle, where 2,500 athletes, representing 50 countries, are booked for competition in 22 sports.

The timing of Goodwill Games II isn’t the best, which is to say it comes at a period when the world is threatened by peace and understanding.

Countries in Europe have been set free. The Germans are uniting. In Washington, D.C.; Minneapolis and San Francisco, a stranger deduces from adoring throngs that Michael Jackson is in the streets, whereas, in truth, it is Gorbachev.

So what does this have to do with attendance at judo, handball, volleyball and the like?

Well, the theory has been advanced here, awaiting acceptance by the Department of Commerce, that when the barrier of rivalry comes down, attendance declines proportionately.

No longer mad at the Soviets and East Germans and not eager to see them beaten, folks in Seattle this month will attend judo, handball and volleyball as they normally would, meaning God help Ted Turner.

It once was established that mere presence of Soviets in this country sold tickets. People paid to see what Russians looked like, coming away surprised they had only one head, two arms, two legs and the usual number of fingers and toes.

But today, Americans look at Soviets, and vice-versa, and yawns are detected on both sides, and a growing warmth further impairs ticket sales.

In 1986 in the Soviet Union, a liberalization was taking root, meaning Muscovites weren’t compelled to attend events to ensure for the government a hit in the Games it was hosting.

So, on TV, you tuned in water polo and women’s basketball and preliminaries for the hammer throw, and you witnessed crowds not big enough to fill the washroom on the night train to Kiev.

“That’s what happens,” you grumbled, “when you start giving guys freedom of choice. They wreck Ted Turner’s show.”

In the upcoming Goodwill Games, weightlifting is going to be staged in Spokane, where Turner might need help. Ted is advised here, as he has been in the past, to do something about nomenclature in weightlifting if he hopes to move tickets.

As you know, weightlifting features events called the clean-and-jerk and the snatch, labels that won’t fly in today’s society, so intrigued with semantics.

It used to be, for instance, that most companies maintained what was called a “bureau of personnel,” soon to give way to “department of human resources.”

A slammer would come to be known as a “correctional facility.”

And, as the language game continued, the broad jump would be billed as the “long jump.”

It would follow, logically, that merchandise tagged clean-and-jerk and snatch wouldn’t move with the ease of items bearing the breezy handle of, say, Tide, Fab, or Cheer.

This isn’t make-or-break for Turner, but we want to help the guy, because anyone who would watch babushkas shovel snow, and draw the inspiration to promote international fellowship, has a break coming.