Common Dream of Sydney Unites a Most Unlikely Pair

I talked to two people Friday who want very much to be part of the U.S. team in Sydney for the Olympics.

One, barring an unforeseen circumstance, is certain to be there. The only question is not whether she will win a medal but how many. Her name is Marion Jones.

The other is waiting anxiously for a call. It will be a crime if he doesn’t get it. You might not believe this could be so important for someone who has already achieved so much in his sport, but it is. His name is Tom Lasorda.

Jones and Lasorda might not have one other thing in common. But that’s one of the beauties of the Olympics that not even the scandalous behavior of some of its administrators can scar. In what other arena can a 24-year-old sprinter and jumper and a 72-year-old grandfather and former baseball manager share the same dream?

*

I met Jones in the lobby of a hotel in West Covina, not far from the track in Walnut where she will compete today in the Mt. San Antonio College Relays.

She has nothing but fond memories of the meet, dating to when she was in junior high in Oxnard. That’s the reason she comes back every year even though she lives in Raleigh, N.C., and, like every other athlete in the field, receives nothing more than expense money.

She thought she might win a sports car there one year. A sponsor donated it as a prize to the meet’s outstanding athlete. She recalls seeing it on display at one end of the track and fantasizing about how nice it would look in her driveway at home. She was 14.

“I didn’t even have my driver’s permit,” she said, laughing.

Evelyn Ashford, who had already been a member of three Olympic teams, won the car.

Jones has always had as much confidence and ambition as she has athletic ability, an Ali-esque (minus the poetry) combination that resulted in her pronouncement two years ago that she would attempt to win five gold medals in Sydney--in the 100 meters, 200, long jump and both relays. No track and field athlete has ever won five gold medals in the same Olympics.

Because she is Marion Jones--who rejected an Olympic berth at 17 because she didn’t want to merely run a relay and who played point guard for an NCAA championship basketball team as a freshman at North Carolina--she was given the benefit of the doubt.

Until last summer.

As part of her two-year plan leading to the Olympics, she also said that she would attempt to win four gold medals in track and field’s World Championships at Seville, Spain.

She fell three short. She won the 100, finished third in the long jump, suffered back spasms in qualifying for the 200 and caught the next plane from Spain.

“Without a doubt, I was frustrated in Seville,” she said. “When I say something, I’m pretty good at following through.”

Frustrated. Not discouraged.

“After I had a chance to go back to my hotel room after the injury, I started to think, ‘I can still do this,’ ” she said. “I still consider myself one of the best in the world, and if I do everything I can in this season, I still think it’s quite possible to come away with these five.”

The difference now is that she will have to run with critics on her back, those who question everything from whether she has the right long-jump coach to whether she has the right husband. (She is married to shotput world champion C.J. Hunter, who is described by some who know him as a teddy bear but is usually about as personable to reporters as a python.)

Jones said she is changing neither coach nor husband.

“I thank all these critics of mine simply because when it’s 20 degrees in Raleigh and we have 10 inches of snow and I might not feel like training, I just think of all these people and they help me get through my workout,” she said. “They’re actually doing me a favor.”

Although the U.S. Olympic track and field trials aren’t scheduled until July in Sacramento, Jones’ race today at Mt. SAC is, in effect, an Olympic trial for her. It is the only open 400 she plans to run this year and could determine whether she is selected for the U.S. 1,600-meter relay team in Sydney.

“I’ll be the first to tell you that if I’m not one of the top four quarter-milers in the U.S., please don’t put me on the team because that’s not fair,” she said. “But if you look on the list and see I’m one of the top four, why not put the best team out there?”

*

Lasorda was in the press box before the Dodgers’ home opener Friday. That is not like he had envisioned it. He had hoped that he and wife Jo would be on the field, with her throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. It was their 50th anniversary.

But after doctors told her she had breast cancer, she went to the hospital for surgery. Lasorda took her home Thursday.

“Thank God, they got all the cancer out,” he said. “She’s going to be fine. I wish she was here with me, but it’s still a special day. I’ve had two goals in life, to be married to her for 50 years and to be with the Dodger organization for 51. I achieved those two milestones today.”

But there is still one more thing he’d like to do, coach the U.S. Olympic baseball team.

That’s all that Bill Bavasi, Bob Watson and others in charge of the team for USA Baseball should have to hear in order to offer him the job. Instead, they’ve put him on a list, with others such as Terry Collins, Jim Lefebvre and Ray Miller, and told him they’ll get back to him.

Nothing against those managers. But they’d have to buy a ticket to get into the Hall of Fame. Lasorda is in it.

“A few years ago, I got a call from Italy from somebody asking me to come over to run a camp for their young players,” he said. “He wanted to know how much the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers would charge for that.

“I told him, ‘Not one cent.’ There was a long pause on the phone. The guy couldn’t believe I would do it for free. But I told him that Italy gave me the greatest gift I’ve ever received, my father. It was an honor to be asked to go back to the land where my father was born.

“I feel the same way about coaching the Olympic team. I want to give something back to this country.”

*

Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com