Armstrong’s Victory Provides Different Spin

Going nuts (and I suppose bolts) over a bike race isn’t easy for many of us who take our mainstream sports straight -- shaken, but not steered.

For years, I couldn’t understand why anyone would race a bicycle across France when you could take the train, while trying to understand the time differentials at the Tour de France only took me back to the dark days of freshman algebra.

This year’s Tour was different -- even though the same man won for a fifth consecutive time.

Overcoming cancer to win anything is remarkable enough, yet Lance Armstrong was often so dominant in previous victories it stole some of the drama and, in some quarters, even raised suspicions.

What made Sunday’s celebration compelling was not that Armstrong won but that he almost lost -- his aura of invincibility replaced by vulnerability, the most bankable commodity an athlete can acquire.

Armstrong fighting off the competition to win by 61 seconds instead of the usual six or seven minutes?

Armstrong falling off his bike and then climbing back on to chase Germany’s Jan Ullrich up a mountain?

Ullrich, in a show of sportsmanship, slowing down to allow the fallen Armstrong time to remount? (Imagine in baseball a runner stopping between third and home to allow an outfielder who had slipped to retrieve the ball.)

This year’s race, coming down to Saturday’s time trials, in the rain, with an Ullrich wreck on a water-saturated turn, ruining his long-shot chances of catching Armstrong?

In a summer sullied by bad news and bad baseball, I’d say Armstrong turned the corner at just about the right time.

It is doubtful bike racing will ever make a fender dent on our daily staple of BBF (baseball, basketball, football) but, for the last few days at least, you could at least make a case for it.

And now, all seriousness aside ...

News: Mayo Clinic conducts study on the golfing “yips.”

Second thought: I’m OK with this so long as Mayo is not using money that might otherwise be spent on curing David Duval’s swing.

News: The movie “Seabiscuit” opens in theaters.

Second thought: They say this horse helped lift out-of-work Americans from the throes of the Great Depression. And to think all these years I thought it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and our country’s entry into World War II.

News: Tampa Bay Coach Jon Gruden tells Playboy if his team wins another Super Bowl he will “dance in a jockstrap on Dale Mabry Highway.”

Second thought: It could have been worse ... Bill Parcells almost had the Tampa Bay job.

News: Alabama State athletic director says the school’s football program is “almost totally out of control.”

Second thought: Boosters are spinning this as positive news and telling fans to focus on the word “almost.”

News: Foxsports.com auctions Internet column to highest bidder.

Second thought: It is incredible Fox would think any Joe off the street could step in and write a lively and readable sports column, as if crafting daily journalism was as simple as house-sitting.

What next? Will Fox, as part of its “Bring-our-subscribers-to-work” campaign, auction off roster spots for the Dodgers? (OK, maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Batting second, playing third base, from the bathroom fixtures department at Home Depot, Bob McDougle.)

And while it is true columnists do not even write the headlines for their own stories, there is a lot more to this meat-grinder work than knowing how to operate a television remote control and hitting the lounge-chair recline bar.

For example, a sportswriter must also have the ability to second guess every move a baseball manager makes with the luxury of 20-20 hindsight.

News: Presidents of non-bowl championship series football schools challenge BCS presidents to a national debate in New Orleans.

Second thought: We can settle this debate now and save everyone the expense report.

Non-BCS president: “Why is it fair that ABC pays the top six conferences $900 million and the other five major college conferences get squat?”

BCS president: “Because people would rather see Ohio State-Michigan on television than Buffalo at Eastern Michigan?”

ABC president: “Yes, that is correct.”

Non-BCS president: “Oh.”

News item: Astronomers calculate there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on Earth.

Second thought: Incredibly, though, not as many stars in the sky as Kobe Bryant rumors on the Internet.

News: Suzy Whaley misses cut at the Greater Hartford Open.

Second thought: This would have been headline news had Whaley’s semi-historic appearance not been trumped months earlier, at the Colonial, by the Annika Sorenstam Publicity Machine.

In golf circles, they call it stepping in someone’s line.

News: Greece plans to increase number of licensed brothels for 2004 Athens Olympics.

Second thought: This move is being made in conjunction with a new Olympic demonstrator sport: Red Light-Green Light.

News item: Top golfers meet tonight in event called “Battle at the Bridges.”

Second thought: Sounds like something that should be on the History Channel, hosted by Norman Schwarzkopf.

News: Gary Carter and Eddie Murray are inducted into baseball Hall of Fame.

Second thought: He cried like a baby, thanked the media, fans, agents, family and just about everyone associated with baseball. I thought for a minute there Murray would never shut up.