BEIJING – As you waited for Michael Phelps to jump in the water yesterday, it was hard not to remember the old story about Mickey Mantle and the 1957 season, the one Yankee fans have passed down from generation to generation for more than half a century now.
The record shows that Mantle was superb that season – a .365 average, 34 homers, 94 RBIs, a Most Valuable Player plaque. The record also shows that George Weiss, the man who operated the Yankees at the time, wanted to give Mantle a pay cut because those numbers weren’t as eye-popping as 1956, when he went .353-52-130 and won the Triple Crown in addition to the MVP.
Mantle had wounded himself by being too good, by setting the bar too high, by making the extraordinary seem so ordinary that anything less any shades below superhuman could seem disappointing.
So it can be with Phelps. A day earlier in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay, there had been a sense that Phelps had to be rescued by Jason Lezak, almost to the point that Lezak had gone in and dragged a distressed Phelps back to shore while also finding time to catch the Frenchman, Alain Bernard, by a whisker in the anchor leg for the gold.
Now, this is to take nothing away from Lezak did, because that extraordinary final 50 meters will almost certainly be the signature 46-plus seconds of the whole Olympics, and it is true that without Lezak’s heroics, Phelps’ quest for eight golds would be over.
“It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen,” Phelps said yesterday. “I think it proves that nothing is ever really impossible, no matter how long the odds seem.”
Still, it is worth pointing out that Phelps wasn’t exactly sinking like an anchor in that race either. In his leadoff leg, he turned in a 47.51, which was exactly one-one-hundredth of a second off the world record, at a distance that has never been close to a specialty for him. If not for Phelps, the Americans might have been irretrievably buried.
Of course, the fact that he hit the wall second, behind the eye-popping 47.24 of Eamon Sullivan (at least it was eye popping until Lezak got in the water) was what seemed so shocking. Phelps? Second? Is that even allowed in the Olympics? Is that permitted in any pool in the world?
Michael Phelps just doesn’t do second.
And then came yesterday and the 200-meter freestyle. Phelps had finished a disappointing third in Athens in this event. He’d qualified fourth in his heat, was starting in lane 6, where there are usually fights for bronzes, not world records.
“This is one of the events I feel I’ve improved the most in over four years,” he said. “I felt good about things coming in, as good as I could feel.”
And so it was. Another world record: 1:42.96. Another absurd victory margin: 1.89 seconds, more than a full body length, about three weeks in swimming time. And another layer of invulnerability attached to his dolphin-like physique, to go along with a third gold at these Games (and a ninth overall, meaning he’s getting ready to roar by Carl Lewis and Mark Spitz in the passing lane).
Good thing George Weiss isn’t the GM of Speedo, still in possession of that million-dollar bonus check. For a few more days anyway.