PANNED AM GAMES

Greetings from the Pan Anachronism Games, where the top athletes in the Americas used to meet to compete every four years, but that was long before Winnipeg ‘99, otherwise known as this summer’s place not to be.

Who isn’t here, not running, not jumping, not boxing, not swimming, not throwing and not rowing?

You name them.

Maurice Greene, Marion Jones, Michael Johnson, Ato Boldon, Bruny Surin and the rest of the fleetest feet in North and South America--all gone to Europe, to run for big bags of money on the prestigious Golden League circuit and prepare for next month’s World Championships in Seville, Spain.

Amy Van Dyken, Jenny Thompson, Brooke Bennett, Lenny Krayzelburg and the rest of the United States A swim team? Training instead for next week’s summer nationals in Minneapolis.

The top amateur boxers in the United States are preparing for the World Championships.

The under-23 national soccer teams from Brazil and Argentina, perennial contenders for the Olympic gold medal, are sitting this one out.

There are no basketball Dream Teams here, the current group of NBA traveling all-stars having just qualified for the Sydney Olympics in a tournament in Puerto Rico last week. So the United States sent a bunch of CBA players here in their place.

Likewise, the United States dispatched the jayvees to Canada to fill out the fields in women’s gymnastics, men’s volleyball, women’s basketball, road cycling and tennis.

Once, the Pan American Games reigned as the world’s second-greatest international sporting competition, behind only the Olympics. Mark Spitz swam here, Wilma Rudolph ran here, Teofilo Stevenson boxed here.

Now, pushing 50, they are sadly out of vogue--the Pan Am Not Here Games, frequented by virtually nobody who’s anybody, their guest lists gutted by the contemporary glut of world championship events and the ever-escalating quest for more money elsewhere.

For the moment, these are Canada’s Games, although most of Canada, quite frankly, can’t be bothered.

Dick Pound, the Canadian vice president of the International Olympic Committee, dropped by only long enough for the opening ceremony and a couple of meetings, pulling out of town by the middle of the first week.

The Canadian baseball team, with surprising victories over Cuba and the United States, has become the most exciting thing to hit Winnipeg since aerosol mosquito spray. But it is a squad larded with alternates and second-line journeymen after many first choices said no thanks to Team Canada officials, preferring instead to remain with their triple-A and double-A teams.

And the glamour event of track and field, the men’s 100 meters, was a competitive and public-relations fiasco for the host country. Surin, the Canadian 100-meter champion, did not run, committing himself instead to the rapid pursuit of European lucre. Nor did Donovan Bailey, the 1996 Olympic champion, who claimed he wasn’t in shape, even though he is being paid $200,000 by Pan Am Games organizers to promote the event and arrived in Winnipeg a day after the 100-meter final to compete in the 400-meter relay.

When Glenroy Gilbert pulled out because of “a strained groin”--Gilbert later joined Bailey on the Canadian 400-meter relay team--Canada was left with only one entrant in the 100-meter final, Brad McCuaig, who finished dead last in a lumbering 10.31 seconds.

The winner of the most prestigious race in the ’99 Pan Am Games?

American Bernard Williams, who ran 10.08 after placing seventh in the same event at the U.S. nationals the month before.

None of this is Winnipeg’s fault, but that hasn’t stopped the local media from dropping into a full-on defensive stance. While addressing the issue of the no-shows in a special Pan Am Games preview section, the Winnipeg Free Press ran a long list of athletes in attendance who “are still ‘world class.’ ” Included on this honor roll:

* John Zuber. Played 45 games for the Phillies last year!

* Craig Paquette. Still property of the New York Mets!

* Tara Snyder. Ranks 47th on the Women’s Tennis Assn. list--”about 150 spots higher than 18-year-old Wimbledon phenom Alexandra Stevenson.”

After Canada upset the United States in a pool-play baseball game, on a misplayed pop fly in the bottom of the 11th inning, the Winnipeg Sun breathlessly rhapsodized: “Move over, Carlton Fisk and the Boston Red Sox, you’re (sic) 1975 Game 6 dramatic victory has company.”

Same game, assessed in the Free Press: “Arguably, it was the greatest international baseball game ever played in the greatest international baseball tournament ever held.”

Following this was a weeklong canonization of the man who delivered the greatest Texas Leaguer in the greatest international baseball tournament ever held, the courageously named Stubby Clapp--a third-generation Stubby, we have been told--who won’t be going to Disneyland after the Pan Ams, but back to Memphis, Tenn., where he toils as a .273-hitting infielder for the St. Louis Cardinals’ triple-A club.

As this is written, another Stubby Clapp profile is airing on Canadian television. There’s Stubby now, pulling the bridge out of his mouth to display his missing front teeth. And there is Stubby again, signing autographs and showing adoring fans the uppercut that delivered his timeless winning blast--tape-measured, more or less, at 127 feet.

That’s the trouble with having the home-field disadvantage, media-wise. American newspapers can ignore the Pan Am Games, and many have, with others, in keeping with the spirit of the competition, sending their B-team Olympic writers. Aside from a postgames two-hour highlights show on ESPN, there will be no U.S. television coverage of the Pan Am Games. But Canadian papers and TV stations still have special sections and air time to fill, and the allure of covering tomorrow’s Olympians (maybe) today can carry a reporter only so far.

Mario Vasquez Rana, president of the Pan Am Sports Organization, has acknowledged the non-attendance problem, which is why he is lobbying to make the 2003 Pan Am Games a qualifying event for the 2004 Summer Olympics. Easier said than done, with international sports federations already running their own Olympic qualifiers and turning them into big moneymakers.

“We must go step by step,” IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch cautioned during a one-day stopover in Winnipeg last weekend. “Because all sports are different.”

In the meantime, these Games scuffle along with whatever they have been given. Big names?

Here’s one--a Canadian goalie named Vezina.

No relation, however, to the guy with the name on the hockey trophy. This one is called Steve. And he plays on roller blades.