Good Mornin’! Good Mornin’!
When I think of Oh-lympics, I think of summer, I think of 1984 and I smile.
The internet tells me 140 countries came to Los Angeles that summer though 14 Eastern Bloc folks said, no thank you, included the Russians and back then East Germans. You see children, if you know history, there used to be two Germanies after World War II.
There was the free one and the Russian one but they called them East (the bad guys) and West (the good guys.) And all those commie folks were just shooting up steroids and cheating. They were making women into men through chemistry not politics back then.
But the LA Oh-lympics were all about America. Oh, yeah, we had boycotted the 1980 games in Moscow due to the commies invading Afghanistan and all, thanks Jimmy Carter.
But he messed up the hostage crisis in Iran which ironically was the country we were up against to get the ‘84 games.
Why not go over to Moscow and kick butt and take names and rule the athletic world? We really need to find a way to keep politics out of sports from t-ball on up, folks.
But, hey, I’ll go buy another lotto ticket and hope for the best on that one. Anyway, 1984 was awesome. Michael Jackson was selling Pepsi and literally lighting the world on fire (his hair) and this guy named Peter Ueberroth was brought in to oversee the whole thing. Oh, yeah, and the games made about a $250 million dollar profit.
I wonder if we can get the summer games in Sunflower County sometime soon? He later became the MLB Commissioner and did some great things in the five years he was in charge as well as some shady collusion stuff with owners.
Anyway, the US dominated, Carl Lewis kicked butt in four events, Edwin Moses continued his dominance of the 400-meter hurdles and heck, if you wore the red, white and blue and competed, you heard the United States national anthem a whole bunch. I’m sure those other 140 countries know most of the words still. That was the summer that Mary Lou Retton wowed everybody in gymnastics, a pre-cursor to Simone Biles but Biles has raised the bar so high that the gymnastics powers that be are punishing her for being so good and better than the rest.
Oh, and dare I forget, that was the summer of dominance for both men and women’s basketball. Cheryl Miller and Teresa Edwards led the ladies to Oh-lympic dominance and then this fellah named Michael from North Carolina teamed up with fellas named Steve, Vern, Joe, Jon, Chris, Sam, Alvin, Wayman, Jeff and Leon to win gold medals. Heck, they never lost from the time they hit the practice gym.
They took on eight NBA All Star teams that included guys named Magic and Bird and won all eight games. Then all eight Oh-lympics games. Some of those fellahs came back in 1992 with fellahs that didn’t make that ‘84 team named Karl and Charles and continued to kick butt.
We need another 1984 moment. We need to dominate, we need to get back to the competition on the field and in the gym and play by the rules we have, not the ones being written after the final scores.
We need to be America and paint up Japan with red, white and blue! USA! USA! USA! We need to go out and kick butt and take names, stand up for the national anthem and make the other countries go home humming it and knowing most of the words.
