A few days ago we linked to a TMZ report on Michael Phelps canoodling with Miss California in Hawaii. Let it be known that The Toy Department is OK with that. Kudos to Phelps, in fact.
His trip -- let's not call it a vacation, as it did appear he was near a pool; this is similar to the way I claim to be "working" when I'm "at the bar watching sports" -- came only days after his performance at the Pan Pacific Championships (or Pan Pacs, if you want to be cool about it) caused USA Today to say "it was exactly that kind of salad-days schedule that allowed U.S. teammate Ryan Lochte to supplant Phelps this summer as the world's best swimmer."
Salad-days schedule, in this case, refers to a youthful time marked by immaturity. It has nothing to do with you coming home to find that your wife has declared it salad day, though both usages kind of make it clear that the whole thing is a bit of a bummer.
Because he won only two individual gold medals at the Pan Pacs, people are worried about Michael Phelps. They think maybe he's peaked, or that his motivation can no longer be piqued. Either way, the narrative these days is that he's got to re-find himself and that drive that made him the most decorated Olympian of all time.
ESPN put together this interesting take on Phelps, now. In it, Phelps and coach Bob Bowman discuss their months of feuding over the former's fading work ethic. But the story frames the situation well: Phelps spent several years of his life dedicating every second to becoming unquestionably the best, and then he became it.
So, what next? In sports, it's all tangible. That's one reason we watch. At the end you can identify those who are the best combination of talent and hard work and genetics and put them on the highest box and give them gold. No champion has ever been a clear-cut as Phelps. So what's left to chase?
And, yet ... at the very time that Phelps could have reasonably walked away or at least ducked into the shadows -- and maybe that's what he's tried to do by skipping out on training -- he also has come to mean more to his sport than any athlete in the world means to any sport.
At one time, Tiger Woods was golf. Now, he's infidelity. Even back in the seemingly harmonious days, Woods spread the game of golf but ultimately did not become its everything. He was the unquestioned best, yes, and he reached a new demographic because of the shade of his skin. Golf, though, would have been fine without him.
It's different with Phelps and swimming. He gives it an identity when it badly needs one. Children are more sports-obsessed than ever, and the intensity of those pursuits has ratcheted to terrifying levels. Kids still at the Curious George reading level are on elite travel teams, and sports specialization has become the norm.
Phelps makes swimming cool and is its premier, and in some ways only, media draw. He feels that weight, but will it be enough to tug him back and make him whole again? Or will the goals he's set for the 2012 Olympics -- which he told The Sun he won't be sharing with anyone but his coach -- be enough to drive him?
We should admit something: if we could easily understand those who are driven the way Phelps was/is, they wouldn't be so separate. So predicting how all this will go is folly.
I'd like you to do so anyway. The end of the ESPN story says Bowman expects Phelps back in the pool at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club on Sept. 7, and that with six consistent months of training his pupil will once again be the best in the world.
What say you? What will become of Baltimore's prodigal son?