Slip sliding away The waning credibility of pro sports rivals that of the White House BY CHIP YOUNG

American sports are taking a tumble, and it is not a very appealing sight.

This column was written on the eve of Tampa Bay’s win in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup final. The showdown featured two teams with glorious, glamorous traditions: the aforementioned Lightning and the Calgary Flames. (The sounds you hear, not unlike the unceasing buzzing of cicadas, are Maurice "Rocket" Richard, Gordie Howe, Milt Schmidt, Terry Sawchuk, and anyone else who played in the old six-team National Hockey League, whirring like lathes in their graves.) Who will have watched the final without having to regurgitate their Molsons? No one older than a high school hockey player.

On another channel, we are treated to the finals of the august National Basketball Association, whose players long ago forgot how to play the game. The three main stars are an accused rapist and acknowledged unfaithful husband; a thug with the smoothness of a Caterpillar earthmover; and a tantrum-prone punk who gets shifted from team to team because his mental schisms outweigh his skills. Who is watching the L.A. Lakers of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal versus the Detroit Pistons and Rasheed Wallace? No one besides the street kids who play daily hoops, couldn’t work a pick-and-roll on a drunk in the park, and think a dunk is a hoop skill to be learned before being able to dribble with both hands.

Right now, only two American sports have any degree of validity: pro football and major league baseball. Thank all gods for the presence of an older generation to keep the faith in baseball, because without old sob sisters like this writer, and enough media sentimentalists to turn the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry into a Norse saga, the empty suits that run the game would have long ago closed their used car lot — proprietor, Commissioner Bud Selig — and limped on down the road.

The weekend of June 4-6 offered only three sporting events worth mentioning, beyond the knee jerk baseball schedule that entrances BoSox fans and any others who can get a game via satellite featuring the team of their childhood allegiance. The other events were the Belmont, where Smarty Jones’s aborted bid for the Triple Crown of horseracing drew more attention than the entire Stanley Cup. The preposterous Arena Football League, incidentally, creamed the hockey championship in the ratings. Next came the Memorial Golf Tournament in Ohio, where beloved old boy Freddie Couples put on a charge to challenge wooden donkey Ernie Els, only to fall short down the stretch. The third wheel consisted of the French Open tennis final, between two obscure Argentines, Gaston Gaudio and Guillermo Coria, in a match that deserved an investigation by tennis officials. Coria’s lightning start was reversed by purported cramps that let Gaudio back into the match after he faced match points in swept sets. This wouldn’t have passed scrutiny as a Narragansett Racetrack finish back in the ’40s, when our track was so blatantly corrupt that even out-of-town bookies wouldn’t handle the races. If it hadn’t started at 9 a.m. Sunday morning, becoming a nice, irregular foil to politicians lying to the public on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, even this intriguing transgression would have passed unnoticed.

The clout of pro sports is rapidly diminishing in the US. Major reasons include the outright greed of anyone involved in the Sweaty Sciences, the dilution of talent at the ostensibly highest levels of play, and outright stupidity of the owners and executives who run the leagues. They abet and even fail to combat the excesses epitomized by sports agents and the huge salaries paid to their generally mediocre clients. Paying $1 million a year to a catcher or back-up infielder who hits .250 is like giving $100,000 to a car mechanic who can change a tire. And while yes, Virginia, America is indeed a melting pot (at least according to those folks who stick the only minorities they can find on the GOP convention stage, in a desperate and disingenuous attempt to foster the myth of the Republican Party as a "big tent"). But it would be foolhardy not to recognize the backlash caused by the signing to million-dollar NBA contracts of young black athletes who haven’t graduated from high school.

If it wasn’t for NFL football’s absolutely Spielbergesque televising abilities, and its blatant violence — which gives a woodie to every quad jock too inept or lily-livered to make it or break it as a youth (hence the replica jerseys, which Walter Mitty would have worn had they been available in his era and size) — it too would suffer from minority-itis. NFL marketing operates at the level of a Karl Rove wet dream, and its advertisers turn back-flips to intersperse homoerotic and lesbian fantasy beer ads between replays of a wide receiver being clothes-lined on a crossing route or a QB getting blindsided on a blitz, ad nauseam. The New England Patriots, who have actually gone a step above this level to project a "Band of Brothers" feel, with upsets that NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue might have soon felt compelled to conjure, are another reason why the sport has succeeded beyond even creator-genius Pete Rozelle’s wildest expectations. What other sport can you "watch" on TV while working around the house, or simultaneously shooting pool and the shit at your local bar, knowing that even if you miss a live play, you’ve still got three replays coming?

Pro sports in this country are as endangered as Rummy Rumsfeld and Condee Rice’s credibility. The dazzle and destruction of the NFL — "wardrobe malfunctions" notwithstanding — and the "Build it and they will come" reminiscences of baseball stand alone. It is sad, but very true for any country in which Tonya Harding’s female boxing matches and celebrity poker have reasonable chances of becoming Olympic sports.

NOT READY FREDDY

Speaking of US sports that don’t make it, add Major League Soccer, our conflicted pro venture, which is an unmitigated disaster.

MLS soccer is, in a word, unwatchable to anyone who has seen the real version of the sport. Slow, technically lacking, and over-hyped, it is the great media myth. Just because all the car ads show a bunch of kiddies with ill fitting and inappropriate soccer gear piling into Soccer Mom’s vehicle does not mean the sport has caught on in America. The attendance figures show this to be a lie. Yes, it has rabid fans — all three of them. Any knowledgeable soccer fan is off watching Fox Sports international matches, not the dire exercises being passed off as the full two bob by American networks.

Beginning on June 12, Portugal will host the 2004 European championships. Anyone who wants to see what Pele called "jogo bonito" ("the beautiful game") will tune in. (Soccer also used to be called "the simplest game," but thanks to the egos of coaches that rival those found in the major sports, their contorted discussion of tactics attempt to make rocket science resemble playing kick the can. To no avail of course, but the media are too scared to confront this Wizard of Oz-like charade.)

Players such as France’s Zinedine Zidane and Thierry Henry, Italy’s Francesco Totti, the Netherlands’ Ruud van Nistelrooy, and Portugal’s own Luis Figo, are so far superior to any American player that it is beyond comprehension. Even metrosexual David Beckham, England’s captain and arguably its best player, is a level below many of his peers in Europe. He just happens to be a male hottie married to Posh Spice, and along with the image-enhancing film, Bend It Like Beckham, he makes much better copy than a skilled mad dog such as sunglasses-wearing Dutch midfielder Edgar Davids, a personal favorite.

America’s hope of the future via Ghana, highly publicized 14-year-old Freddy Adu, should not be allowed to play in the MLS. Not because of his age, just since it will stunt his growth faster than a three-pack-a-day habit. Yes, he may be a phenom. That is a good bet. But his staying and playing in the MLS to hone his skills would be the equivalent of sending 14-year-old version of Rocco Baldelli, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays star from Cumberland, to hone his baseball skills in Italy.

Adu should be sent to Europe to learn from, and with the best. At home here, he risks getting injured by clumsy tackles by inept or vicious defenders. This is a pearls-before-swine scenario at its utmost. Under intelligent, restrained, and experienced tutelage, he may well evolve, as Pele has suggested, into an extraordinary player. The US national team players never made bigger strides in skills and performance than when they began going abroad to play with the best. Adu should be the next export. Otherwise, professional soccer in America will be nothing more than what it is today: a myth, only good for selling chi-chi minivans. Tune in Euro 2004 and see what I mean.