The Gold Medal Wiener

In my opinion, when measuring the most dominate Olympic athlete of all time, we must consider the wiener.

If you are dutifully keeping up with your Rio Olympics YouTube fail videos, you might immediately assume that I’m referring to Japanese pole vaulter Hiroki Ogita, and his unfortunate, yet anatomically impressive disqualification at the hands of his man parts.

I am not.

And you gymnastics fans might be thinking that I’m referring to a three-time Olympic medalist in the men’s trampoline event - high-flying Chinese silver medalist, Dong Dong. Again, you would be wrong.

South African rugby phenom Werner Kok? American synchronized diver Steele Johnson?

What’s the matter with you people? Get your minds out of the sewage-infested gutters of Rio. I’m obviously talking about hot dogs. Now get your minds into the sewage-infested pools of Rio and think swimming, people! Swimming and hot dogs. What do they have to do with each other, you ask? Well, a lot, as a matter of fact, when discussing total swimming dominance.

Michael Phelps has once again turned in one of the most amazing sports careers of all time. He left the sport of swimming the first time in 2012, at the end of the London Olympic Games, but decided on a comeback and added six more medals to his neck in Rio this year. He retires (we think) with twenty-eight Olympic medals, a staggering twenty-three of them gold.

Let’s put that into perspective with some handy bullet points:

- No other single Olympian in history even has double digits in gold. Not even Dong Dong.

- Phelps has two more total career Olympic medals than Egypt, and the country of Ireland is only beating him by one in the overall medal count. Don't even get me started on Kyrgyzstan. He beat them before he could legally buy beer.

- Brazil, this year’s host country, has the same amount of career gold medals as Michael Phelps now has at home, assuming Phelps gets out of the crime-infested host country with all of his medals.

At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Phelps made history by winning eight gold medals in eight straight events. He broke the long-standing record of fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz, who went seven golds for seven events in Munich in 1972. When Phelps broke Spitz’ medal record, the world crowned him as the new “Greatest Olympian,” and there was very little public debate about it. Now, as Phelps finishes up with his astonishing career medal count, crushing former Soviet female gymnast Larisa Last-name-ina for all-time individual medals won, and ending up with close to three times as many career medals as Spitz, he will be written into the history books as the greatest, bar none.

I am here today to dispute that. I am here today to tell you that Spitz was better, and my argument lies with the wiener.

My case for Spitz being a more dominant swimmer doesn’t even take into account that he won most of his 1972 Olympic races by body lengths, or that he set new world record times in all seven swims. I’m not even focusing on the fact that he swam without goggles, that he swam without a cap, or that he swam with an afro, all of his rather prodigious underarm hair, and a Tom Selleck mustache. My argument even ignores his 1970’s red, white, and blue Speedo, which is hard to ignore.

My argument has to do with eating. A lot of fuss is always made during the Olympic coverage about how much Michael Phelps and the other swimmers eat every day. While it is certainly a lot, in the world of competitive swimming, it’s pretty standard. World-class swimmers do two things - swim and eat. I was by no stretch of the imagination a world-class swimmer, or even a county- or city-class swimmer, but when I was swimming in high school, I would come home from practice and eat the entire right side of the fridge. That’s just par for the course, swimming-wise.

The amount of food that Spitz and Phelps put away during their swimming days is not where my argument lies. My case for Spitz’ athletic superiority comes from the amount of food he could put away during a race.

When I was in high school, our swim coach told us a story about Mark Spitz. Back when Spitz was in high school in Santa Clara, California, Coach Pete had seen him race at a nationals meet. Spitz already held national high school records in every stroke, and he was heavily favored in every one of his races, but when the swimmers took the blocks for one of his events, he was absent.

His name was called over the loudspeaker, and everyone at the pool and in the grandstands began looking around for him. When the race officials called his name again, telling him to report to his lane to start the race, he was seen jogging toward the starting blocks from the snack bar. He had three hot dogs in one hand, and he was eating another while he was running toward the pool.

He reached his starting block at one of the middle lanes of the pool, chewing the last of the hot dog he had been eating while he ran. He handed two of the three remaining dogs to the timer behind his block, asking the man to please save them for him. He then joined his opponents, stepping up onto his starting block, still holding a hot dog.

Now, let’s be clear for a minute. We’re talking about an Oscar Mayer wiener, in a bun, with the condiments of Spitz’ choice. In his hand. On the starting blocks. Of a nationals race. He had just Joey Chestnut’ed one of them while running. He was now standing over the end of his lane holding another.

As the crowd looked on in gastro-intestinal awe, Mark Spitz proceeded to stuff the entire hot dog into his mouth, reach down to touch the block at the “take your marks” command, and dive into the pool with seven other swimmers, starting his race while chewing and swallowing a whole hot dog on lap number one.

He beat the nearest finisher by almost two body lengths.

Michael Phelps is undoubtedly awesome, but all he ever did was swim. What about the wiener? It probably never even occurred to him to combine competitive eating with competitive swimming. Mark Spitz was a trailblazing, groundbreaking, lightning-fast, “I can eat a hot dog during this race and still whip your ass” kind of an athlete. Wait thirty minutes after eating before getting in the pool? No thanks. I’ll eat while I’m swimming.

Phelps says he did everything he set out to do, and the world seems to be in agreement on his status as the Greatest Olympian.

That may be true, but when measured against the wiener factor, Spitz still has my vote.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

About the Author, 2016

Here at Just a Smidge, we continue to gain new readership each year. This past year alone we have documented as many as two new readers. So, for both of you just joining us, welcome! We like to start each New Year here with a little meet and greet.

I am the 43-year-old husband of one and father of three, living in the idyllic northern California town of Rocklin. Think overpriced coffee and minivan soccer moms. Our crime consists of teenage shoplifters and people wearing last year’s fashions.  

My amazing, wonderful, loving, caring, trustworthy, adorable, extremely intelligent, smokin’ hot wife teaches high school all day so that I can stay home and take naps and occasionally type. Speaking of that, I should really learn to type. I am the lone staff writer here at Just a Smidge. Based on how much money I make writing this column, it would be inaccurate to call this a job, so let’s just go with hobby.

My beautiful, fantastic, perfect-in-every-way wife and I have been blessed with three boys. They have, in turn, blessed us with a marked decrease in our sanity and an ever-dwindling amount of patience. They are known around here as Sons Number One, Two, and Three, and we’ve been calling them that for so long now we don’t actually remember their real names. I don’t consider that to be a huge problem, however, since we know what they look like.

They are currently in fifth, fourth, and second grade.  They have all been at the same elementary school since kindergarten, which never ceases to amaze me. Based on their behavior at home I thought for sure one or more of them would have been kicked out by now. I think my genius wife is secretly paying off the principal, which would go a long way toward explaining why all the money seems to just vanish every month. It’s probably worth it, though.

Anyway, enough about my wife and kids. Let’s talk more about me. Here are twenty other things that you should probably know about me:

1) I am in amazing shape for 43 years old. I actually left my job as an underwear model to do this writing thing.

2) My grandpa killed General Patton's dog. That is the single most outstanding thing anyone in my family has done. We are high achievers.

3) Walking out into bright sunlight makes me sneeze. I inherited this trait from my grandmother. I am one of only an estimated seven people in the world with this disorder. We have a club.

4) I am loosely related to a U.S. president, but I’m not sure which one. I think it's either Grover Cleveland or Woodrow Wilson. I don't care. I would only be excited if it was Teddy Roosevelt, and it isn't.

5) My favorite movie is a three-way tie between Romancing the Stone, Fletch, and Caddyshack. This should tell you a lot about me.

6) Until I was in my teens, I thought that coffee really would stunt your growth, and that drinking alcohol made your beard grow faster, because in the movies, when guys woke up with a hangover, they always had a five o’clock shadow. I wasn’t too bright as a kid.

7) Now that I have kids, I cry at “proud parent” moments in movies. I think this is because based on my children’s behavioral history, I may never have any proud moments of my own.

8) I am slightly over six feet tall, I weigh around 200 pounds, and I have the bladder capacity of a four-year-old. Unfortunately, Son Number Three inherited this trait. He is seven and has the bladder capacity of a hamster.

9) My three favorite flavors are burnt pepperoni, slightly burnt bacon, and well-toasted sesame seeds. Basically, if it has caught on fire, I want to eat it. Except for my s’more marshmallows. Those should only be browned.

10) I swam 100,000 yards in one week when I was in high school. I could not swim more than 100 yards today without needing a floatation device, an oxygen tank, and a defibrillator.

11) I love bacon. See number 10.

12) I quit my day job in 2013 to become a professional writer. So far, I have only managed to become a mediocre homemaker, but I hope to get this column syndicated, so if you know somebody, please introduce us. Bacon is expensive.

13) I constantly get my left and right mixed up. This makes driving directions with my wife fun.

14) My favorite joke of all time is:

A guy walks into the psychiatrist’s office wearing nothing but underwear made out of Saran wrap. The psychiatrist looks at him and says, "Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts." This should also tell you a lot about me.

15) I like writing dialogue.

“You do?” they asked in unison.

“Yes. I do,” he said solemnly.

16) I love most foods (see number 10), but I have a deep, abiding hatred for cantaloupe. If bacon is a 10, cantaloupe is a negative 3000.

17) I love to travel and I love to stay home, but I don’t want an RV. Go figure.

18) My absolute favorite thing that has ever happened on this earth – and I am including my marriage and the birth of my children in that – was when the Oregon State Highway Division tried to disintegrate a dead whale with a half-ton of dynamite in 1970. I wasn’t around yet, but thankfully they had video cameras back then. (Just Google “Oregon Exploding Whale.”)

19) My favorite thing ever said on television – and I am including anything ever uttered on The Newlywed Game – came from KATU Channel 2 newsman Paul Linnman in 1970 after the whale dynamite was detonated. When large chunks of whale rained down on people and cars over a quarter-mile away, Paul noted, completely deadpan, “The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

20) My wife is still laughing right now about number 1.

So there you have it, folks. You now know everything you need to know about me. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

About the Author, 2015

Here at Just a Smidge, we continue to gain new readership each year. This last year alone we have documented as many as two new readers. So, for both of you just joining us, welcome! We like to start each New Year here with a little meet and greet.

I am the 42-year-old husband of one and father of three, living in the beautiful, albeit extremely parched, northern California hamlet of Rocklin. If you have any water, please send it to us. Seriously. Anyway, I am the lone staff writer here at Just a Smidge. Based on how much money I make writing this column, it would be inaccurate to call this my job, so let’s just go with hobby.

My amazing, wonderful, loving, caring, trustworthy, adorable, extremely intelligent, smokin’ hot wife teaches school all day so that I can stay home and take naps and type. Speaking of that, I should really learn to type. My beautiful, fantastic, perfect-in-every-way wife and I have been blessed with three boys. They have in turn blessed us with a marked lack of sleep and an ever-dwindling amount of patience. They are known around here as Sons Number One, Two, and Three, and we’ve been calling them that for so long now we don’t actually remember their real names. I don’t consider that to be a huge problem, however, since we know what they look like.

They are currently in fourth, third, and first grade respectively, and if they do not attend school respectively, they will be consigned to the doghouse. We don’t actually have a dog, so if they ever get out of line I usually just put them in the dryer until my wife gets home. Just kidding. Sorta.

Anyway, enough about my wife and kids. Let’s talk more about me. Here are twenty other things that you should probably know about me:

1) I am in amazing shape for 42 years old, and actually left my job as a male supermodel to do this writing thing.

2) My grandpa killed General Patton's dog. That is the single most important thing anyone in my family has done. We are high achievers.

3) Walking out into bright sunlight makes me sneeze. I inherited this trait from my grandmother. I am one of only an estimated seven people in the world with this disorder. We have a club.

4) I am related to a U.S. president, but I forget which one. I think it's either Grover Cleveland or Woodrow Wilson. I don't care. I would only be excited if it was Teddy Roosevelt, and it isn't.

5) My favorite movie is a three-way tie between Romancing the Stone, Fletch, and Caddyshack. This should tell you a lot about me.

6) Until I was in my teens, I thought that coffee really would stunt your growth, and that drinking alcohol made your beard grow faster, because in the movies, when guys woke up with a hangover, they always had a five o’clock shadow. I wasn’t too bright as a kid.

7) Now that I have kids, I cry at “proud parent” moments in movies. I think this is because based on my children’s behavioral history, I may never have any of my own.

8) I am slightly over six feet tall, I weigh “just over” 200 pounds, and I have the bladder capacity of a four-year-old.

9) My two favorite flavors are slightly burnt pepperoni and toasted sesame seeds.

10) I swam 100,000 yards in one week when I was in high school. I could not swim more than 100 yards today without needing a floatation device and a defibrillator.

11) I love bacon. See number 10.

12) I quit my day job in 2013 to become a professional writer. So far, I have only managed to become an amateur homemaker, but I hope to get this column syndicated, so if you know somebody, please introduce us. Bacon is expensive.

13) I constantly get my left and right mixed up. This makes driving directions with my wife fun.

14) My favorite joke of all time is:

A guy walks into the psychiatrist’s office wearing nothing but underwear made out of Saran wrap. The psychiatrist looks at him and says, "Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts." This should also tell you a lot about me.

15) I like writing dialogue.

“You do?” they asked in unison.

“Yes. I do,” he said solemnly.

16) I love most foods (see number 10), but I have a deep, abiding hatred for cantaloupe. If bacon is a 10, cantaloupe is a negative 3000.

17) I love to travel and I love to stay home. But I don’t want an RV. Go figure.

18) My absolute favorite thing that has ever happened on this earth – and I am including my marriage and the birth of my children – was when the Oregon State Highway Division tried to disintegrate a dead whale with a half-ton of dynamite in 1970. (Just Google “Oregon Exploding Whale.”)

19) My favorite thing ever said on television – and I am including anything ever uttered on The Newlywed Game – came from KATU Channel 2 newsman Paul Linnman in 1970 after the whale dynamite was detonated. When large chunks of whale rained down on people and cars over a quarter-mile away, Paul noted, completely deadpan, “The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds.”

20) My wife is still laughing right now about number 1.

So there you have it, folks. You now know everything you need to know about me. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2015 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Soccer Season, Again

We are in our fifth (and hopefully final) soccer season as parents. I can say with all honesty that I am not the type of parent who seeks to reenact the sports glory days of my youth through my own children. Mostly because that would be unfair to them, but also because I was a mediocre athlete as a kid and never really had many “glory days” to speak of anyway.

I will leave their sports glory, or lack thereof, up to them, but I will definitely choose their sports for them. More to the point, I want to choose what sports they don’t play. Soccer, specifically. We are graciously allowing them to play soccer while they are young, mostly out of a mixture of fairness and stupidity. We foolishly let Son Number One play soccer when he was five or six, not realizing how detrimental children’s soccer can be. Not for the players, mind you, but for the parents.

We won’t let them play football due to the high potential for player injury, but we really need to limit soccer for the high potential of parental heart failure. When Son Number One played his first game back in the fall of 2010, I nearly had three heart attacks and a stroke in the span of forty-five minutes.

The stress wasn’t due to too much excitement. It was just the opposite. It was from the very justifiable expectation of excitement followed immediately by absolutely nothing happening. The ball would get right up to the goal line and then seemingly every player would simply stop playing. No matter how much or how loud us helpful parents yelled “KICK IT!!!” no one would kick it. It was gut-wrenching and heart-stopping to come so close to a goal, only to have everyone stop and not kick it into the goal. And it happened over and over and over. And over.

We should have just stopped after the first season, but again, we were idiots. Son Number Two was eagerly waiting his turn to play, and we were weak and just couldn’t bring ourselves to say no. (We kick ourselves now for that moment of lily-livered parenting.) So when soccer season (or the dark times, as it is known around our house) arrived the next year, Number One and Two were both playing on different teams. If we thought one soccer season was bad, two at once was excruciating.

Son Number Two’s team continued the rich tradition of painful inaction in front of the goal, but Son Number One’s team brought us a new frustration. They had graduated to a much larger field, and while the players were a little more aggressive and skilled near the goal, they almost never got there. The field was so large, ninety percent of the game was spent passing the ball back and forth from one team to another out in the middle of the four-acre Bermuda grass rectangle of despair. “PASS IT TO YOUR OWN GUY!!!” we yelled helpfully. They did not.

Early on in his second season, Son Number One showed us a glimmer of hope. Not hope of making soccer more palatable for his parents, but of us possibly being able to get out of this mess. He gave us a light at the end of our long, dark soccer tunnel. Thankfully, Number One was born with my inherent laziness. Given the choice between motion and rest, ninety-eight percent of the time he will choose rest. He did not like the big field at all. He was quoted by his coach as saying, “You know, Coach, I don’t really like to run, so if you could put me on defense or at goalie, that would be great.”

This was good news and we nurtured it. “Boy, that field sure is large, isn’t it, son. It’s waaaay bigger than last year. Must be hard to run all the way up and all the way back every time. I’ll bet you’re tired! I know I would be. You know, the field will be even bigger when you move up again next season. Think ya wanna play again next year?”

There was no way he was going to opt for a third season. The parents shoot… they score! Unfortunately, while we were happily listening to Son Number One complain about being tired, his gung-ho younger brother, Number Two, seemed to be enjoying himself tremendously out on the pitch. Uh-oh.

Youth sports are not a one-way street. It is not “all about the kids,” as some positive coaching organizations want you to believe. Youth sports are somewhat about children learning skills, teamwork, and sportsmanship, but mostly about what the parents are able to handle. We just couldn’t afford to go through heart attack and stroke-inducing soccer for any longer than absolutely necessary, so we needed to act fast to discourage Son Number Two. We saw our opening with Son Number One and took it.

New family rule: Each child gets to play soccer for two years and then it’s on to swimming and/or baseball. That way, dad should still be around to enjoy it all.

Kids are not really deep philosophical thinkers – at least, my kids aren’t – so they don’t tend to question their lives too much as long as everything seems fair to them. “I’m forced to do manual labor all weekend? Well, OK, as long as my brothers have to also.” So Son Number Two fell right into line with the soccer moratorium. He played his two years and hung up his cleats at the ripe old age of six, just like his older brother. Did he want to play longer? I never asked him and I don’t care. Like I said, youth sports are a two-way street, and my arteries have the right of way.

I’ve had a few scares that just turned out to be indigestion from the snack bar food, but luckily no actual heart attacks yet. Son Number Three is now in his second (final) soccer season, out on the big field, so my heart just has to stay strong for two more months and we can all move on with our lives. Please keep me in your prayers.

“PASS THE BALL TO YOUR OWN GUY!!!!”

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Swimming Upstream

Can someone please tell me what is so difficult to understand about “kick from your hips, not your knees?”

Pivot your legs from your hips. Don’t bend your knees. Well, bend your knees a little, but just a little and only on the down stroke. Keep them straight coming up. And you’ve got to keep your toes pointed. Point them straight back away from you, not down toward the bottom of the pool.

What is hard about that?

Apparently, a lot, because my boys cannot seem to figure it out.

A few nights ago was my oldest boy’s very first swim practice. I think we paid just under $47,000 to have him and his younger brother, Number Two, join the youth swim club for the two-month “Fall Program” this year. If we want them to keep swimming after October, we can make that happen for another $300,000 or so.

I was a swimmer and a water polo player in my youth, and I have visions of all three of my boys excelling in the pool and becoming Olympic water polo players. I was not tall enough -- or anywhere close to good enough, for that matter – to be Olympic-caliber. They just need to practice a lot, and beat the odds and end up over 6’-4” tall. I plan to feed them a lot and hang them by their ankles whenever possible.

So, given my dreams for their aquatic success, I was very excited about Son Number One’s first practice. I was so excited that I didn’t even bother to question where the practice might be taking place, and drove him to the wrong pool complex. Once I realized my mistake, I drove across town at 96 miles per hour, hoping to still make it on time and preserve our first impression with his coach. Instead of that, I was the parent that brought his kid to the first practice seven minutes late. Great.

OK, we’ll try to move past that, and just wow him with your superior swimming skills. No problem.

The first few swim practices of the year involve a lot of kick boards. There were a lot of kids in the pool, but since they are still small at six and seven years old, they had them three to a lane. (After getting a rough count of the number of kids and doing some quick math based on registration fees, I estimated that it must cost about three trillion dollars to run a kids swim program. That seems like a lot.)

Off they went across the pool, holding their kick boards out in front of them and churning up the water behind them with their little legs kicking like mad. All of them except my son. He quickly fell behind the group. There was no churning of water going on behind him. An occasional foot could be seen rising above the water near his butt, but that was about it. I could see his legs under water moving like mad, but he didn’t seem to be making any progress. At one point, I’m positive that he actually went backward for a little while.

To give you a good idea of how slow he was compared to every other kid in the pool, here is an example. At one point the coach was sending the kids in each lane one at a time down the pool, spaced out at reasonable time intervals to avoid having them too close together on their way down the pool. Son Number One was the first to be sent in his group of three. The second kid to be sent passed my son almost immediately, and when the third kid in the group had traversed the entire length of the pool and made it to the opposite wall, Son Number One was just approaching the middle of the pool. He had gone an astonishing five feet in the time it took the third kid to go 25 yards.

The coach was working with him as much as possible. “Kick with your whole leg, not your knees. Keep your legs straight and move them from your hips. Point your toes.” The coach didn’t have a lot of time for one-on-one instruction, though, since he was in charge of 65 other kids, presumably to justify his estimated 45 million dollar annual salary.

The practices are only a half-hour long, so it seemed to be over almost before it had really started.  OK, buddy, we’ll come back tomorrow night and work on kicking some more.

The next night, Son Number Two got to come to swim practice also. He had missed the first one due to a conflicting soccer practice. Don’t even get me started on that. Anyway, into the pool they went. They are a year and a half apart in age, but they ended up in the same group, which was slightly surprising based on what happened the week before at try-outs. They both did pretty well, but when Son Number Two was asked to show the coach his backstroke, I’m fairly sure it was the first time he had even heard the term, let alone attempted the stroke. He resembled someone who had been lying on their back in the grass, and suddenly realized that they were covered from head to toe with ants. It was not pretty.

Off they went across the pool, kick boards in front, little legs working like mad behind them. There goes the group, across the pool, and there are both my boys, still five feet from the starting wall, kicking like crazy and not going anywhere at all. It seems Son Number Two was born with the same inherent kicking deficiency as Number One, exclusive apparently, only to our family.

“Kick with your whole leg, not just your knees. Point your toes.”

Hmm… I’d better start working with Son Number Three right now.

Maybe they’ll do better when it comes time to start using their arms and breathing to the side. Or, maybe there will be some openings in the Olympic water polo team’s equipment management department.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?

Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Marc Spitz Hot Dog at Phelps

Michael Phelps just turned in one of the most amazing sports careers of all time. He leaves the sport of swimming at the end of the London Olympic Games with a career 22 medals, an astounding 18 of them gold. No other single Olympian in history even has double digits in gold. In fact, he has more gold medals than the entire country of Argentina. He has more career Olympic medals than India.

At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Phelps made history by winning eight gold medals in eight straight events. He broke the long-standing record of fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz, who went seven golds for seven events in Munich in 1972. When Phelps broke Spitz’ medal record, the world crowned him as the new “Greatest Olympian,” and there was very little public debate about it. Now, as Phelps finishes up with his astonishing career medal count, crushing former Soviet female gymnast Larisa Last-name-ina for all-time individual medals won, and ending up with twice as many career medals as Spitz, he will be written into the history books as the greatest, bar none.

I am here today to dispute that. I am here today to tell you that Spitz was better.

My case for Spitz being a more dominant swimmer doesn’t even take into account that he won most of his 1972 Olympic races by body lengths, or that he set new world record times in all seven swims. I’m not even focusing on the fact that he swam without goggles, that he swam without a cap, or that he swam with an afro, all of his rather prodigious underarm hair, and a Tom Selleck moustache. My argument even ignores his 1970’s red, white, and blue Speedo, which is hard to ignore.

My argument has to do with eating. A lot of fuss was made during the 2008 Olympic coverage about how much Michael Phelps ate every day. While it was certainly a lot, in the world of competitive swimming, it was pretty standard. World-class swimmers do two things. Swim and eat. When I was swimming in high school, I would come home from practice and eat the entire right side of the fridge. That’s just par for the course, swimming-wise.

The amount of food that Spitz and Phelps put away during their swimming days is not where my argument lies. My case for Spitz’ athletic superiority comes from the amount of food he could put away during a race.

When I was in high school, our swim coach told us a story about Mark Spitz. Back when Spitz was in high school in Santa Clara, California, Coach Pete had seen him race at a nationals meet. Spitz already held national high school records in every stroke, and he was heavily favored in every one of his races, but when the swimmers took the blocks for one of his events, he was absent.

His name was called over the loudspeaker, and everyone at the pool and in the grandstands began looking around for him. When the race officials called his name again, telling him to report to his lane to start the race, he was seen jogging toward the starting blocks from the snack bar. He had three hot dogs in one hand, and he was eating another while he was running toward the pool.

He reached his starting block at one of the middle lanes of the pool, chewing the last of the hot dog he had been eating while he ran. He handed two of the three remaining dogs to the timer behind his block, asking the man to please save them for him. He then joined his opponents, stepping up onto his starting block, still holding a hot dog.

Now, let’s be clear for a minute. We’re talking about an Oscar Mayer wiener, in a bun, with the condiments of Spitz’ choice. In his hand. On the starting blocks. Of a nationals race. He had just wolfed down one of them while running. He was now standing over the end of his lane holding another.

As the crowd looked on in awe, amazement, and amusement, Mark Spitz proceeded to stuff the entire hot dog into his mouth, reach down to touch the block at the “take your marks” command, and dive into the pool with seven other swimmers, starting his race while chewing and swallowing a whole hot dog on lap number one.

He beat the nearest finisher by almost two body lengths.

Michael Phelps is undoubtedly awesome, but all he ever did was swim. It probably never even occurred to him to combine competitive eating with competitive swimming. Mark Spitz was a trailblazing, groundbreaking, lightning fast, “I can eat a hot dog during this race and still whip your ass” kind of an athlete. Wait 30 minutes after eating before getting in the pool? No thanks. I’ll eat while I’m swimming.

Phelps says he did everything he set out to do. That may be true, but until he can do that, Spitz is still the greatest swimmer that ever lived. In my book, anyway.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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