Jones Has Her Thing Going On

SACRAMENTO — Dear Michael Johnson:

The boss asked recently if there are any writers around the country we should consider adding to our sports staff. After reading your USA Today column last Friday, you will be pleased to learn that I am ready to make a recommendation.

You might not write as cleverly as a Jim Murray or as gracefully as a Red Smith or as colorfully as your fellow Dallasite, Blackie Sherrod, but you have a certain je ne sais quoi that has all the runners here for the U.S. Olympic track and field trials running at the mouth.

On second thought, I do know what it is.

It’s the trash talk.

Forget Howard Stern and his imitators.

You, Michael, are the ultimate in shock jocks, one who actually is a jock.

What was it you said about your rivals at the Westwood-based HSI (Handling Speed Intelligently) club?

“I think Inger Miller . . . will have a tough time making the team. She has not run well this season. I think she and some of her teammates at HSI have lost focus and rested on what they did last year. . . . At lot of them are realizing . . . they’re not ready.”

Antonio Pettigrew? “ . . . a veteran, but when people are running really fast, he usually doesn’t perform well.” Antuan Maybank? “ . . . a weird one.”

Marion Jones? “While Marion might have her way in the 100, it could be tough for her in the long jump,” you wrote, predicting a win for Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

About those predictions. Of the 11 you made, you got four right.

See, you’ll fit right in here in The Times sports section.

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I’m eager to see how you handle today’s column.

It was such a terrific day for track and field Sunday at Cal State Sacramento--there was a capacity crowd of 23,503, some lining up at 11 o’clock Saturday night for the few tickets that would go on sale eight hours later--that it probably was a challenge for you and your poison pen.

You could have, I suppose, started with your own race in the 400-meter final. You acknowledged afterward that you didn’t really attack it, and although your time of 43.68 seconds was very good considering the headwind down the stretch, it didn’t come close to your world record of 43.18.

“Records, records, records,” you said, frustrated with some of your new colleagues in the press tent when they asked you about it. “Everything is about records.”

Well, yeah.

Admittedly, that often is the case for us cynics. But we had to make some exceptions Sunday.

There was the drama of Jones, trying to keep her five-gold-medal dream for the Sydney Olympics alive, coming through on her third long jump attempt after two fouls to earn the right to continue and then winning the event on her fifth jump.

And of jump-offs, the first in the U.S. trials since 1936, to determine the third and final Olympic team members in the women’s long jump and men’s pole vault.

There was the human interest story of legally blind Marla Runyan winning a place on the Olympic team with her third-place finish in the women’s 1,500 behind four-time Olympian Regina Jacobs and Suzy Favor-Hamilton.

There were the valiant, though futile, efforts of 38-year-old Joyner-Kersee in the long jump to make her fifth Olympic team and of 17-year-old Monique Henderson in the women’s 400 to make her first.

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Before you come to work for us, we’ll have to talk about some details, such as how long you plan to continue writing columns part time.

I’ll take you at your word when you said Sunday that you are “on my way out” of track and field and that you are “preparing for a career after I’m done as a competitor” by writing the USA Today column.

I understand that you might need the job, considering that you and wife Kerry, a former television reporter, had your first child, Sebastien, in May.

You should know, however, that you will have to take a pay cut, at least in your first couple of years with the newspaper. It will take a while to match the $2 million a year you receive from Nike, and, thus, your next $24 million in career earnings probably will come a little less quickly.

We also have these things called deadlines, although they probably will not be a problem for you. I assume you are a fast writer.

Media hotels will require some getting used to after all these years of luxury accommodations. We get only eight channels on our televisions. One is the Weather Channel, which constantly reminds us that the temperature in Sacramento is hot.

Speaking of heat, you’ll have to handle a lot of that from your subjects if you continue to write so caustically. So far, though, you are doing very well.

As you said Sunday about the criticism from those you scalded, “That’s my job, to do it objectively. . . . I stand by everything I write. If those people who didn’t like what I wrote used it for motivation, they need to thank me.”

Don’t hold your breath waiting to hear from Miller. Although she proved you wrong Saturday by finishing second in the 100, she still seemed peeved when she said, “Maybe he should untwirl those beads in his hair; they’re too tight.”

Whew. It has been a while since anyone said that about me.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected]

The Facts

* WHAT: U.S. Olympic track and field trials, Day four of eight

* WHERE: Sacramento

* TV: 8 p.m., PAX

TODAY’S EVENTS

* 4 p.m.--Men’s javelin qualifying

* 6:45 p.m.--Women’s javelin final

* 7:30 p.m.--Men’s long jump final

* 7:45 p.m.--Men’s 3,000 steeplechase

* 8:35 p.m.--Women’s 400 hurdles final

* 8:40 p.m.--Women’s discus final

* 8:45 p.m.--Women’s 5,000

* 9:25 p.m.--Men’s 5,000