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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > July > 04
Friday, July 4, 2008
BLOG: Athletes and the Stars & Stripes
At baseball parks across the country today, at the U.S. Olympic Trials — both track and field in Eugene, Oregon and swimming in Omaha, Neb. — at race tracks, soccer fields and maybe a golf tournament or two, American flags will be unfurled on the fields of play, waved by spectators on the sidelines and in the grandstands and carried by some of the competitors.
And that’s gotten me to thinking about some of the more memorable displays of athletes and the Stars and Stripes — from U.S. goalie Jim Craig wrapped in the flag and looking in the stands for his dad after the American’s Miracle on Ice hockey victory over the Soviets at the 1980 Olympics, George Foreman carrying a tiny flag in his right fist as he ambled around the ring after winning gold at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City to my all time favorite, Bellbrook High’s Charlie O’Dell carrying Old Glory after 9/11 — I’ve either witnessed, written about or both over the years.
The displays are great when heartfelt, but distasteful and often outright wrong when used merely as a prop or, worst of al,l when used to disparage a beaten competitor by waving the flag in his or her face.
I was there that day at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney Australia, when the U.S. men’s 4-by-100 meter relay team — Maurice Greene, Jon Drummond, Brian Lewis and Bernard Williams — acted like real jerks after winning gold.
I remember how the Olympic Stadium crowd of 110,000 was mostly turned off by them. The Australians have little use for what they call “tall poppies” — people who work especially hard to stand out — and these guys were taking that concept to the extreme.
Other American athletes were embarrassed, some were enraged.
Here’s a paragraph from what I wrote about the display:
“The U.S. sprinters turned into WWF wrestlers with American flags as props. Two guys shed their shirts. All began to preen and parade around. Lewis used the flag as his own personal do-rag, tying it to is head while he did muscleman type poses. Williams began to mimic the evil-eye poses of the wrestler The Rock, then wrapped the flag around his face like Count Dracula. The sprinters used the flags as bat wings, tourniquets and, when they couldn’t think of anything else, simply dragged them along behind them.”
The flip side of the relay team’s disrespect came from O’Dell, then a burr-headed senior lineman for the Bellbrook High football team. It occurred just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001 and minutes before the kick-off of Bellbrook’s game with Northridge.
The pros and most college teams had called off their weekend football games. Miami Valley high schools had decided to go on with their schedules, but no one in the stands or on the sidelines that night was absolutely sure the game should go on.
Back in the shadows of the Bellbrook stadium, Eagles head coach Kevin Basinger had spoken to his edgy team. Hestressed country and community and freedoms, including the opportunity to play football on Friday night.
When someone asked if one of the players wanted to carry out the American flag an assistant coach had brought to the game, O’Dell stepped forward.
And as the purple gates in front of the goal post opened and the team charged onto the field through a haze of smoke — thanks to parents with fire extinguishers — and ripped through the big banner the cheerleaders held, O’Dell said he was thinking one thing:
“I’m not the fastest guy in the world and I worried about everybody running right past me. I worried about the flag. I didn’t want it to fall or bow or do anything but stand tall.”
And did it ever
As Charlie charged through the smoke — flag held high, his team coming on behind him — folks in the grandstands were reduced to tears and Nick Falzarano, a local photographer of note, was on the field, snapping off four quick frames.
He sent one of the shots to Sports Illustrated. The magazine loved the picture and printed it across two pages in the front of its Sept. 24 issue.
As SI picture editor Jim Colton put it:
“Nick’s photograph captured the essence of what we were looking for. It was very poignant and colorful and the kid carrying the flag had a great expression on his face. It showed these kids weren’t ruffled. And the background the scoreboard reading first-and-10 - very subtly expressed the challenge ahead.”
