We will always have Paris.
Just not as the site of the 2012 Olympics.
We will always have baseball and softball. Just not in the Summer Games.
We will always have fools. Yes, they keep running the IOC and ruining the Olympics.
My plan for seven years out was to tour France in the summer, watch a bicycle race, attend the arts festival in Avignon, drink wine in Bordeaux, climb to the peak of Mount Blanc, sample goat’s cheese in Barcelonette, revisit the history of Versailles and look at myself in the Hall of Mirrors, stay for three weeks at the Paris Hilton and watch softball and baseball at the Olympics.
Call me Inspector No-clue-so.
Paris has been nixed, Stevie.
Last week International Olympic Committee members chose London over odds-on favorite Paris (and longshot New York and other also-rans).
France still hasn’t won a battle against England since, what, September 1315?
A pint of lager instead of a well-
bred cabernet sauvignon. A big clock instead of a magnificent tower. Shepherd’s pie with a brown sauce instead of pressed duck with an orange sauce. A barge on the Thames instead of a yacht on the Seine. Chips instead of pomme frites. English leather instead of French kiss. City of fog instead of City of Lights. Michael Caine instead of Brigitte Bardot.
Like many IOC members, there are things I don’t appreciate about the French. That fascination with Jerry Lewis movies, for instance. And their smugness and their berets and the wee-hoo sounds their ambulances make and their celebrations. In a few days, they will take a day off because of another revolutionary idea.
Bastille, my heart.
But Paris hasn’t had a Summer Olympics since, what, September 1315? London’s had the Olympics
recently, since I was born.
Beach volleyball on the rocks of Brighton, where it would be rainy and cold in July, or 80 degrees on the sand in Cannes. I rest my case.
I love London. My daughter went to school there, and I have been to the great British city two dozen times – to Wimbledon, the theater, the Millennium Dome.
And my thoughts and wishes are with the English today in the aftermath of a senseless tragedy.
I honestly preferred to hang out in Provence and Paris for the Olympics. No Paris, no Provence, no Olympics. I’ll probably be dead by then, anyway.
That decision was bad enough.
Then the IOC had to go stick it to the United States again.
New York for an Olympics location is a stretch.
But no baseball and softball? No baguettes and ball.
Humphrey Bogart would be forced to say in “Casablanca”: “We’ll always have synchronized swimming.”
Help me out.
In a historic review of all 28 summer sports in the Olympics, IOC members were told to vote thumbs up or down on each.
Badminton, yes.
Baseball, no.
Bows and arrows, yes.
Softball, no.
Why taekwondo rather than tae- kwon-no?
Last year in Athens, I went to practically every venue to see practically every sport.
Baseball games would attract 6,000. Greeks loved the game.
Archery attracted four. Not 4,000. Four. Nobody cared.
Women’s softball has become one of the most exciting events at the Olympics.
Watching archers is exciting only when archerees are standing against a target with apples on their heads.
I could understand if the IOC members thought the United States was sending the Rockies to compete in the next Olympic baseball tournament. It’s not as if the U.S. dominates in baseball. We’ve won two medals (gold and bronze) in four Olympics.
And I don’t think this was an indictment of Fidel Castro or the Taiwanese Little League team.
There was some loose talk that IOC members were concerned about American baseball players using steroids.
Hello, track and field, wrestling and weightlifting.
Weightlifting. Now, there’s a great worldwide sports competition. Clean and jerk, my foot.
Women’s softball? We’re not talking about a men’s beer-league team. That would be curling.
Try to watch curling in the Winter Games sometime. All in favor, raise your hands. Canada for, 115 countries against.
Or bobsled. You can enter the bobsled competition (hiyadoin’, Jamaica) and finish within a second of the world record. Here’s a sport that requires falling to the bottom of a hill in a frozen gutterspout.
But softball is played in 127 of the Olympic countries. Ask me how many countries have water polo teams.
Maybe five.
Only thing I can figure is the IOC members who voted against softball hate their mothers. And the United States. And picnics. And hot dogs. (The U.S. helped popularize the game of softball by sending equipment and coaches and videos to Third World countries.)
I’m surprised the IOC didn’t add squash or broccoli or karate or poker.
What’s next? Will the IOC vote to eliminate men’s and women’s basketball?
Of course you can’t get rid of basketball with China hosting the 2008 Olympics. Yao Ming might get mad – and get his first technical. How about dumping men’s and women’s relay races? Tennis and 100-meter dash and diving and swimming?
Just remove the sports in which America succeeds. If the IOC really works at it, in an upcoming Olympics our country could end up with fewer medals than it did in Moscow in 1980.
(We didn’t go.)
For one of the few times, the United States and the French were on the same side.
Paris was denied, and baseball and softball were purged.
Woody Paige’s column appears in The Denver Post on Sundays. He can be seen weekdays on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNews on “Around the Horn,” “Cold Pizza” and “1st and 10.” He can be e-mailed at wpaige@denverpost.com.
