Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2B
APPEAL from IB
Jungkeun facing former T\vin
' ; Terry Tiffee. (Not making that
/MP ‘ 7 — Tiffee was the DH and
batted third for the USA on
Wednesday.)
Baseball already has high
level play featuring interna
tional superstars. It’s called the
Major League.
A Baseball has a place where
players can go overseas to face
quality competition. It’s called
the Japanese League.
Baseball also has a place
♦ '*
Track needs clean star
By Charean Williams
McClatchy Newspapers
BEIJING Once
/.upon a time, Carl Lewis
was the greatest Olympian
ever, with one of the
greatest performances in
Olympic history. When he
won gold medals in the
100 -meter dash, the 200 -
meter dash, the long jump
and the 4x100 relay in the
1984 Games, Lewis was
as talked about as Michael
Phelps is now.
Lewis was the star of
the sport that was
Olympic king.
Phelps now has
replaced Lewis as the
greatest Olympian ever,
while a drug scandal, bad
decision making and the
popularity of beach vol¬
leyball, gymnastics and
Phelps have relegated
track and field to the back
pages and “plausibly live M
TV in prime time back
home. Track and field’s
image is scarred; its credi
* bility gone.
Maybe that will
change beginning Friday.
Maybe Tyson Gay, Felix,
Jeremy Wariner, Sanya
Richards, Muna Lee,
Chinese hurdler Liu
Xiang and/or Jamaicans
Usain Bolt and Asafa
Powell can do something
extraordinary to put the
focus back on the track
athletes. Maybe no one
will test positive for
drugs.
Maybe...
It’s up to the athletes
to save the sport from
itself.
44 We see the bigger
picture,” American sprint
er Allyson Felix said
Thursday. “It’s a responsi¬
bility, but I think we’re
* very excited about it,
' because we’ve been given
this opportunity in this
platform to do what we
love and have America
look at us and maybe
bring hope back to our
sport. We’re apt to do
some amazing things, and
if we can really let people
. see that and draw in fans,
! maybe we can change the
state of the sport. ■
* Gay was featured in a
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FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS — Friday, August 15,2008
for aspiring players to hone
their craft against similar com
petition. It’s the minor leagues,
What we saw here on an
incredibly smoggy night at
Wukesong Baseball Field 2
was baseball you could appre
ciate only if you were — well,
South Korean.
The South Korean fans had
a great time. They chanted and
slammed those thunderstick
things together and cheered
their team to a comeback vie-
U.S. track and field press
conference earlier this
week. Warmer and
Bernard Lagat talked
Wednesday, and Richards,
Felix and Lolo Jones were
featured Thursday.
They are what track
and field has to sell. They
are what’s good about the
sport.
• • We have some
extraordinarily talented,
very attractive athletes
who are participating
from our country,” Logan
said. “We have celebrities
to sell. Only we haven’t
sold them up to this
point.”
The sport could have
Richards and Felix
attempting history of then
own. Richards petitioned
the International
Association of Athletics
Federations, track’s gov¬
erning body, in early 2007
for a schedule change that
would allow her to com- |
pete in both the 200 and
the 400. Felix followed
with her own petition.
Only Michael Johnson
and Marie-Jose Perec
have accomplished the
feat, with both making
history at the 1996 |
Olympics.
The IAAF’s denial is
another example of the
sport shooting itself in the
cleat.
Michael Phelps, what
he’s doing is amazing, and
it’s inspiring to watch,
Felix said. “It was unfor
tunate that we weren’t
given that opportunity, but
he’s also setting world
records, Olympic records
every time he gets in the
pool.”
Track and field ath¬
letes don’t have a new
space-age suits to help
them go faster. Still, they
need some kind of out-of
this-world performance
— a drug-free perform
ance — to get the world
back on track.
.. I don’t want to hear
about drugs; I don’t want
to hear about cheaters,
Richards said. “It’s time
for that to go in the back
ground and time for us to
show the greatness of our
sport. 41
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tory.
Even that didn’t make this
compelling. Attendance was
almost as low as the quality of
play.
It’s one thing for team
handball or judo to draw small
crowds — the Olympics giving
niche sports a chance to shine
every four years is fine,
When you take one of the
most popular games in the
world, imbue it with Olympic
self-importance, put it on the
LOOSE from IB
your own group. M
Davis said he used the meeting —
sort of a hybrid between an extended
practice and a full-fledged scrimmage
— to get a better idea of how his
players fit together on the field, using
individual pjayers in multiple posi¬
tions during a session heavy with sub¬
stitutions and player movement on
both sides.
Alexa Ditmar handled most of the
pitching duties for South, with Lakan
Smith and JV player Tonia Soto also
seeing time on the mound. Davis said
that Soto, a sophomore, could see
some chances to pitch for the varsity
during in-season tournaments. things
Obviously there’s a lot of
that we need to work on, but you
know, there were things that we did
very well in the process too,” Davis
said.
Central coach Bill Richardson was
pleased with what he saw on both
sides of the ball. His team scored the
only runs of the session before the
teams went to scenarios involving
runners already on base, when Lauren
Head hit a two-RBI single in the bot
tom of the second inning,
44 We definitely figured out where a
couple of people belong defensively.
We had some pretty good swings,
especially in the second inning when
we hit the ball pretty good,
Richardson said,
Subs and player movement was
also a big part of the exercise for
Central, the coach pointed out.
■ We don’t have many players in
the program, so we dressed 17 of our
22 today, and we can actually move
some people around,” he said.
Brittney Head recorded most of
the pitching duties for Central, but
Richardson also gave some time to
sophomore Ashlyn Capp, whom he
said will mostly pitch JV but looked
good during the Tuesday session.
He also complimented both Head
sisters, as well as Jamie Strickland’s
defensive showing on the left side of
the infield.
Everybody did something good
today ... and I’m very, very happy
with them,” said Richardson.
44 We know South is pretty good.
They’re-going to be solid and they’re
going to make plays the right way,
and when we can work on it against
somebody like them that plays good
defense, we’re in business. They are
far above most of the teams we’ll see
in region play.”
Both teams get after it for real
tonight, with South hosting Milton
and Central visiting Peachtree Ridge.
E-mail BJ Corbitt at
bjcorbitt@forsythnews.com.
world’s stage and hardly any
body cares, that’s a bad sign. ’
Let’s be honest, anybody
who really likes baseball gets
their fill by watching the big
boys play. It’s August. Major
League Baseball is offering
tremendous pennant races and
stories. Take the overblown
patriotism away, and what the
Olympics is offering is
mediocre baseball on tempo
rary fields in front of a sparse
audience.
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Photo/Jared Putnam
South Forsyth infielder Jenna Quinn corrals a throw at second base as Forsyth
Central’s Jessica Anderson steals the bag during Tuesday’s scrimmage.
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_ i _ V
The U.S. team consists of
players who not only were not
on Major League rosters, they
weren’t even on the short list
of players likely to be called
up in August.
The Olympic motto is
Swifter, Higher, Stronger, M
but USA Baseball has revised
it to be “Almost Good Enough
to Sit on the Bench for the
Nationals.”
If baseball regains its
Olympic status in 2016 or
beyond, and if USA Baseball
at that point wants to take this
seriously, it should fill the team
with college stars and top
prospects, younger players
who might not match up well
against veteran foreign compe¬
tition, but would offer the
cachet of promise.
I’d rather see a young,
unpolished version of David
Wright playing for the U.S.
team than a well-polished ver¬
sion of Terry Tiffee.