The Gentle GIANT

Another opponent defeated, another Olympic invitation received, Bruce Baumgartner rumbles into a hallway idly picking what appears to be bits of another heavyweight from his teeth.

His thick, black chest hair is matted with somebody else’s sweat. His mustached upper lip curls into a smirk.

He has just been asked a question. It is one often posed to this 35-year-old wrestler who will be competing in his fourth consecutive Olympics, trying to become the first American freestyler to win three gold medals.

He drops his 6-foot-2 frame onto a chair, his 286 pounds falling sideways out of his singlet, and repeats the question as onlookers duck.

“Am I a dinosaur?”

He glances at his sizable lap. Sitting there is a 5-year-old boy named Bryan.

“Well, I look like one, right, son?” Baumgartner says.

The boy stares up, laughs, grabs one of his father’s massive shoulders. Baumgartner laughs back. Onlookers blink.

“So I’m a dinosaur, huh? What do you think, Bryan? What kind of dinosaur am I?” Baumgartner says.

Before you can say, Tyrannosaurus rex, he is hugging his son, who promptly disappears beneath biceps.

“I know what kind of dinosaur I’d be,” Baumgartner announces, pausing.

“I’d be a Daddysaurus.”

Memo to those expecting their Olympic tough guy to be Mr. T.

Get ready for Mr. Rogers.

*

It’s not that Bruce Baumgartner has never lost his temper.

OK, so maybe never during a match. Maybe never while defeating every American he has wrestled since 1981.

But there was this time recently at Edinboro (Pa.) College, where he serves as wrestling coach.

He ran onto the mat and began screaming at one of his young wrestlers, so loudly and ferociously that observers said onlookers turned pale.

“He was a monster on the loose,” assistant coach Tim Flynn said.

The reason?

You sure you want to hear it?

Baumgartner was angry at the young man for hitting another wrestler.

Sorry, America.

You want Hulk Hogan, you turn on TNT.

Baumgartner is strictly public television.

“You have to understand, wrestling is not a sport of anger,” said Baumgartner’s wife, Linda. “It’s a sport of determination.”

Baumgartner has fistfuls of that. He is trying to become only the fifth American athlete to win medals in four Olympic Games because, well, he is not sure he can.

“In 1984, I told Dave Schultz I was wrestling two more years,” he said. “Then, after I got the silver medal in 1988, I didn’t know if I could make it back for 1992. Then I didn’t know about 1996.”

Then the Games were awarded to Atlanta. And former Olympic champion wrestler Schultz was shot to death. And Baumgartner stared into a mirror.

In a sport dominated by the young and chiseled, he saw someone who still relies on little more than country smarts and the raw strength of a old truck.

In an Olympic world dominated by dream teamers and million-dollar sprinters, he saw a guy who still must work a full-time job to support his championship defenses.

Baumgartner decided it was time for this person to make one last stand.

“The Olympics was always the the place for true amateurism; there was never any money involved,” Baumgartner said. “Now, it’s lost some of that. It’s a showcase for a lot of other things. That’s too bad.”

He will not be one of those other things.

When he received the Sullivan Award this spring as America’s outstanding amateur athlete, stunning favored sprinter Michael Johnson, it was wondered whether voters knew that his hobby was collecting stamps.

Or that his favorite leisure activity was dropping to all fours in the recreation room of his family’s secluded farmhouse in northwest Pennsylvania and allowing his oldest son’s 20 closest friends to climb on him.

Sometimes his two children move to the backyard trampoline. The weight limit for jumpers is 275 pounds, so Baumgartner lies on the top and lets the neighborhood bounce around him.

Surely, voters couldn’t have known that Baumgartner celebrated the award by retiring to his Orlando, Fla., hotel room, calling room service and barking, “You got any ice cream this time of night?

“The Sullivan winner,” sighed Linda, “is Average Joe.”

An average Joe who hasn’t lost to an American wrestler in 15 years.

Considering this country has won more Olympic freestyle wrestling medals than any other two countries combined, Baumgartner’s two-match sweep over Tom Erikson in the trials could be a good predictor for next month.

“Baumgartner’s gold medal chances in Atlanta are very good,” said Mike Chapman, Illinois-based publisher of a national wrestling magazine and author of 10 wrestling books. “There are wrestlers stronger than him, but he’s strong enough. There are wrestlers quicker than him, but he’s quick enough.

“The thing about Bruce is, he’s such a great technician.”

In other words, he knows how to avoid being in a position where the other guy can throw him on his back.

That’s an asset when you are facing top contenders such as Turkey’s Mahmut Demir, a former world champion known for eye gouging, and Andrei Shumilin, a Russian who defeated Baumgartner three consecutive times until he broke that streak in a dual meet this spring.

Wonder if either of these guys knows he could be wrestling somebody who never played football because he didn’t like the contact.

“That’s the truth,” said older brother Bob, who grew up with Bruce as the only children of a diesel mechanic father and a bookkeeper mother in a small town in northern New Jersey. “Bruce is not the kind of guy who likes that sort of hitting.”

Befitting a boy who once tore apart a car engine and put it back together--before he was in high school--Baumgartner preferred wrestling because of its precision and solitude.

He would watch Bob wrestle in high school, then challenge him at home on the living room floor. Rug burns and broken glass ensued.

“Bruce was always just sort of big and clumsy, but even in eighth grade, I wrote in his yearbook that he could wrestle in the Olympics one day,” Bob said. “It was obvious he was the kind of kid who could do anything he wanted if he put his mind to it.”

He finished third in his high school state tournament. He didn’t win an NCAA championship until his senior year at Indiana State.

He met his wife at college . . . when she taped his ankles. Three days later they had their first date at a waffle house. She ordered oatmeal, he had ice cream.

That was Jan. 24, 1980. Every year since then, on that date, they have eaten the same thing.

“Maybe I’ll be in Pennsylvania eating oatmeal and he’ll be in Russia eating ice cream, but we never forget,” Linda said.

Some couples celebrate such things with champagne but, you guessed it, a man who would dominate most barroom brawls has never drunk alcohol.

“There is no dirt on this guy, none,” Flynn said. “He’s so mellow, people think he’s, like, boring.”

His lifestyle is one of the reasons he has survived in a sport where 35 is considered ancient.

It also helps that he is a heavyweight.

He is not required to suffer through the rigors of “cutting” weight the day before a match, a process that often drives out older competitors at lower weight classes. Also, heavyweights don’t move as much on the mat, making the brain as important as the heart.

Baumgartner also has few enemies. Whereas the careers of aggressive wrestlers such as Olympian Tom Brands (136.5) might be short-lived because opponents can’t wait to return a cheap shot, Baumgartner has no accounts due.

In his first match against Erikson in the Olympic trials, Baumgartner even refused to attack Erikson’s left elbow after it was apparently seriously injured with 3:23 remaining in the five-minute session.

After Baumgartner’s 10-0 victory that did not include one takedown on Erikson’s left side, the champion was given a standing ovation for what he didn’t do.

“I would never intentionally hurt somebody,” Baumgartner said. “Some wrestlers would go for that spot, but not me. . . . I treat people like I want to be treated.”

The same doesn’t go for cats. There was recently a stray feline scratching up Baumgartner’s family cat, so he finally put his foot down.

He summoned Linda and ordered her to shoot the wild beast on sight.

“Told me to shoot it with a giant squirt gun,” Linda said.