Olympics: April 2008 Archives

CHICAGO - While piecing together Team USA, general manager Bob Watson must negotiate competing interests, those of the Olympic movement and the Major League Baseball franchises willing to loan out prospects this August.

The roster for the Beijing Games is expected to be revealed in July, and will exclude players who are on an active 25-man big-league roster. That would leave mid-to-high-level minor league prospects -- at least the ones who won't be needed or saved for a pennant race -- and perhaps a college pitcher with a power arm. One player who probably doesn't need to locate his passport: Roger Clemens.

"He's not on my radar screen," Watson, the former general manager of the Houston Astros and New York Yankees, said Tuesday during the U.S. Olympic Committee's media summit at the Palmer House Hilton. "Not because of his off-field issues (but) his last four or five outings in the big-league level - it was a real struggle for him physically.

"He took shots in his elbow and he had hamstring and groin issues...I would rather take (a) 28-year-old who's throwin' well and he's in good physical shape, even though he doesn't have the numbers and the credentials that Roger would have but I could depend on him. See once we go...there's no replacin' him and I don't want to play a man short."

By D.J. Wanberg

I read my colleague Dustin Michael Harris' column in the Sunday edition of The Naperville Sun on the controversy surrounding the upcoming Beijing Olympics and like every good column, it got me thinking.

I've written previously about how I like the Olympics. It's a good diversion every four years from the house of ineptitude that Chicago professional sports can be.

But while I consider the Olympics nothing more than an entertaining sports festival, there have been and currently are many people, mostly with the International Olympic Committee, who couldn't or can't let go of the idea that a utopia of brotherhood, love and understanding is possible every four years which can't be touched by the world situation. And that attitude has come up regarding the upcoming Beijing games.

And for the most part they succeeded until the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany where 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were murdered in a terrorist attack. That changed the nature of the Olympics permanently.

Now that brotherhood, love and understanding comes with a security guard next to it holding a submachine gun with the safety off. The cost of Olympics security could run some countries for a year.

As for China, a communist dictatorship, being awarded the Olympics in the first place, I think of how the character Red Forman from "That 70s Show" used a two-word description to describe people he thought stupid. I can't repeat it because this is a family blog, but I think it fits the people who voted for China to get the Games.

But I'm not for boycotting the Olympics this summer, I don't want to make China mad because according to the U.S. State Department, U.S. imports from China grew 12% in 2007, bringing the U.S. trade deficit with China to $256 billion. I may need shoes this summer.

On a related Olympic note, Chicago is trying to get the 2016 Summer Olympics and trying to bring down a cone of immunity down upon the city for two weeks, magically making the city's problems go away. Reality check people - a total of 23 Chicago public school students have been murdered so far this year. Focus on making it safe for the children of Chicago to live their lives and then think about the Olympics.