Season ticket holders had declined almost 10 percent. No big-name free agents had been signed to generate fan interest. Negative press had arisen in the off-season over the team’s moving veteran Gold Glove shortstop Michael Young to third base in deference to untested 20-year-old rookie Elvis Andrus. And the dismal economy produced expectations that fans would be cutting their baseball-spending budgets.

Cutting ticket prices for most seats to many games

Creating a ticket discount package with next-door-neighbor Six Flags Over Texas

Expanding the availability of the all-you-can eat seats to all games, so fans have the opportunity every night to cap expenses on food and non-alcoholic drinks

Offering free tickets for kids on most Tuesdays

Selling $1 hot dogs and offering half-price tickets on most Wednesdays

Providing post-game fireworks shows to go along with $10 tickets (instead of the standard $25) and $5 parking (instead of the usual $12) on 13 Fridays (as opposed to five last year)

Booking seven pre-game and post-game concerts, two more than in 2008

Increasing the number of giveaway nights (bobbleheads, caps, etc.) to 16 games

Improving the fun quotient with the “Ring of Fire” ribbon-band video boards that encircle the ballpark and bring down the house with Johnny Cash singing while the opposing manager talks to his troubled pitcher on the mound.

Oh, and one other thing: To enhance the marketing initiatives, team president Nolan Ryan and general manager Jon Daniels improved their ballclub. In large part due to new pitching coach Mike Maddux, the 2009 Rangers have gelled into an elite team, now in the hunt to win their division.

How? They got better quickly through management’s new focus on improved pitching and defense. In the first 94 games this season, as compared to last year, they have reduced their opponents’ scoring by 1.3 runs per game, largely because more effective pitchers (thanks to Mr. Maddux) have allowed 69 fewer walks, while the defense (led by the amazingly rangy and graceful shortstop, Mr. Andrus) has committed 28 fewer errors. This has caused the team to compete in close games almost every night, which obviously provides heightened drama for the fan. 

Put these factors together, and the Texas Rangers’ success this year is proven by the following facts:

Through 50 home games, they’ve sold 164,505 more tickets than last season, meaning they’ve sold more single game (i.e., non-season) tickets than any other team in baseball.

Because more fans are staying through the ninth inning at their more competitive games, food and beverage concession revenue has increased by more than 20 percent and merchandise sales have gone up more than 30 percent, in large part due to the reintroduction of the color red to the team’s uniform colors.

Television viewing of the games has surged, increasing 59 percent over last summer (the biggest increase in baseball), with recent games against the Red Sox and Angels drawing more than 100,000 local viewers.

In short, in a year of economic blues, this year’s Rangers have been THE success story of 2009 in North Texas, with prospects good that the buzz, sizzle, and good vibes coming out of Arlington will only continue, as more and more people in these parts hop aboard the gleaming, high-speed train appropriately named “The Ryan Express.”

Jim Collins’ book, “Good to Great,” came out in 2001 and defined what it takes for a business to fulfill its potential. If he starts looking for a new case study to support his theories, Collins should come to Arlington where, in the last 15 months, Texas Rangers President Nolan Ryan has left the organization’s historically underachieving mind-set in the dust.

He’s implemented a system with all its ingredients coming together to jell, using his common-sense approach to management that happens to coincide with Good to Great’s key principles.

Among Collins’ precepts being executed in Arlington these daysRyan identified what Collins calls the “One Big Right Thing,” being the one central goal that can drive a company to its highest level, around which all aspects of the organization are built. For the Rangers, he says that one thing is: “having a competitive team on the field, which drives everything in our operation. If we’re competing well in every game, and winning our share because of our improved pitching and defense, to go with the great hitting we’ve always had, more fans will attend our games, more will buy our merchandise and more will follow us on television and radio, causing more companies to be sponsors.”

He’s rigorous in making personnel decisions. Using Collins’ metaphor, Ryan’s gotten the right people on the bus, put them in the right seats and gotten the wrong people off the bus. He says his greatest accomplishment thus far is “bringing in an outstanding staff of quality baseball people who have a passion for the game.”

In the dugout, he hired Mike Maddux and Jackie Moore as coaches, who were formerly with Ryan's minor league team in Round Rock. To maximize stadium appeal, he brought in Rob Matwick, who used to keep Houston's Minute Maid Park squeaky clean and fan-friendly to be Rangers' executive vice president of ballpark operations. In marketing, he hired Dale Petroskey, who led the Baseball Hall of Fame into its position as the country's top sports history venue. And to head up communications, he brought John Blake back from Boston to do what he had done in Ryan's last years as a player.

Not everyone on the bus, however, needed to be replaced. Ryan saw that General Manager Jon Daniels, Chief of Staff Jim Sundberg and Manager Ron Washington should be kept. Of particular importance is Daniels, who built the farm system into baseball's finest (recognized as such by the magazine Baseball America), while making the 2007 Mark Texeira-to-Atlanta swap (which brought in current starters Matt Harrison, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Elvis Andrus, and top pitching prospect Neftali Feliz), doing for the Rangers what the Herschel Walker trade once did for the Dallas Cowboys.

The organization epitomizes Collins' "3 D's" -- Disciplined People using Disciplined Thought to inspire Disciplined Action. To be a dominating pitcher for 27 years requires a superhuman level of self-discipline, which since retiring as a player Ryan has brought to his banking, real estate, minor league baseball and meat business successes and now brings to the Rangers.

"Disciplined thought is driven by hard data," says Collins. In baseball's information age, GM Jon Daniels has put in place an instantly accessible system of statistical, physical, historical and psychological data on every professional player and top prospect in the world, which drives his every move.

Collins' final component for an organizations' success is having a "Level 5 Leader" -- someone who combines humility with ferocious resolve to produce results.  Yes, Nolan Ryan is the greatest power pitcher ever, but he doesn't wear his accomplishments on his sleeve. He also wants fans to see he's not above sitting in 100-degree heat and weathering rain delays in ballpark seats.

The will that empowered Nolan Ryan to throw fastballs into his mid-forties now drives the 62-year-old executive toward one goal: win the World Series. And why not? If the Boston Red Sox could exorcise the Curse of the Bambino in 2004 after 86 years of futility, then why can't the Texas Rangers do the same with the Curse of the Washington Senators that's been hovering over his team since it moved from D.C. to Arlington in 1972?

Despite the recent demise of the Republican Party nationally, its candidates still hold all the statewide offices in Texas, and that unified record should stay the same in 2010. The outcome of the Perry-Hutchison face-off will answer the question in the front of most political analysts’ minds these days: Do the majority of today’s Republicans favor the far-right conservative Perry approach or the more mainstream Hutchison perspective?

Experts anticipate in next year’s Republican primary that only 700,000 Texans will vote, while the two gubernatorial candidates are expected to spend, combined, $60 million on the race. Do the math. That comes to $86 per vote as the cost of what it takes to do business in Texas politics these days.

For those perusing this newspaper who are not necessarily captivated by legal thrillers, but have an association with young people whose horizons are focused on the realities of today’s job market, The Associate is a must read. These days, Mr. Grisham has a son in law school and a daughter in college, providing him with a reason to reflect on the topic at hand.

Let’s assume the reader embraces the Park Cities mindset — i.e., he’s consumed with the notion that life is all about becoming SUCCESSFUL.

Naturally, as in our neck of the woods, success at the outset of The Associate is defined as going to a good college, then on to a prestigious grad school, and (at last!) obtaining a high paying entry-level job. Mr. Grisham’s newest protagonist, Kyle McAvoy, does all that, graduating from Duquesne University and then Yale Law School, before joining the nation’s largest law firm at its New York office and receiving a starting annual salary of $200,000.

McAvoy, however, has Grisham’s brain, and soon recognizes the clouds in his coffee. Whereas a businessman aspires to maximize his profitability by manufacturing and selling the highest possible number of widgets, in order to “succeed,” the lawyer at a large firm must aspire to manufacture the highest possible number of the attorney’s widget — the billable hour.

The reader can speed through John Grisham’s whirling dervish of a plot in The Associate, or he can spend hours reflecting on what the author’s saying about life’s big picture in the context of today’s frenzied world. Or he can do both.

Despite Lincoln's starting out life under such foreboding circumstances, his country, 200 years later, is celebrating the man historians generally recognize as the greatest president in the U.S. history. The State Bar of Texas is joining in the Lincoln bicentennial festivities, preparing this special issue of the Texas Bar Journal; co-sponsoring a luncheon in Dallas on Lincoln’s birthday featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson[1] ; and lining up another Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, to speak at the State Bar Annual Meeting in Dallas on June 26.

1. BRILLIANCE: Lincoln had astounding powers of concentration, comprehension, open-mindedness, discernment, and communication.

As a boy, Lincoln read every book he could get his hands on. Although the quantity of books available to him in rural Kentucky and Indiana was limited, the quality was high - the King James Bible, Aesop’s Fables, Shakespeare’s plays, the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Lincoln read these timeless masterpieces over and over, memorizing long passages that would form the foundation of his eloquence.

Lincoln’s desire to learn and master arcane material was not a boyhood phenomenon; it lasted throughout his life. Over the course of his adult years, he mastered topics ranging from law to Euclidean geometry to military strategy to foreign policy to the verses of leading poets.

Consistent with his lifelong obsession with reading, Lincoln, as a lawyer and politician, earned a reputation for thoroughly researching and considering all sides of an issue before forming a final opinion. Moreover, he developed that opinion only after extended time in solitude. He didn’t delegate his critical thinking to advisers. Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes Lincoln’s secretary, John Nicolay, on how the president would “resort to the process of cumulative thought, reducing complex ideas to paragraphs and sentences, and then days or weeks later would return to the same passage and polish it further to elaborate or to conclude his point or argument.” This approach is best evidenced by the Gettysburg Address, which reflected Lincoln’s “intense focus on his chosen theme for nearly a decade.”

Because of the deep thinking that went into reaching a conclusion, Lincoln held fast into his convictions. Biographer William Lee Miller relates an exchange between Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, who had described the president’s position on slavery as “slow and vacillating”:

I make no objection to slow, but vacillating is another matter. Mr. Douglass, that charge cannot be sustained. I think t cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it. 

Lincoln’s sheer brainpower must have exceeded that of all other presidents, Jefferson included. The manifestations are the more astounding, as Lincoln’s mind was virtually untrained by his sporadic formal elementary schooling that amounted altogether to about one year. His extraordinary intelligence revealed itself in philosophic under-standing of public issues, in a judicious concern with politically relevant detail, in a mastery of political manipulation, and in military judgment.

2. SELF-CONTROL:  Lincoln maintained clean living habits and high integrity.

Although most of his contemporaries used tobacco, imbibed alcohol, conversed with profanity, and gambled, Lincoln never engaged in such vices. According to biographer Fred Kaplan, Lincoln refused to take part in these activities because they reflected “those aspects of human nature that prevent the triumph of reason and moral vision.” Lincoln also declined to participate in the most popular recreational activities of his era — hunting and fishing. Aside from time spent socializing with friends, Lincoln used his free time for one thing and one thing only: to read. According to Kaplan, “Learning gave Lincoln an intellectual high, to such an extent that he often read aloud, enunciating words in the theater of his own head.”

Lincoln maintained integrity throughout his lifetime, receiving his nickname, “Honest Abe,” the old-fashioned way — he earned it. As a 23-year-old in Indiana, Lincoln became the part-owner of a small-town country store that went out of business, leaving him with creditors and no apparent way to repay them. Over the next decade, as Lincoln pursued a new career as a lawyer, he scrimped and made personal sacrifices to ensure that he could repay his creditors 100 cents on the dollar, even though they had not pressed him to make them whole. As lawyer and a politician, Lincoln’s integrity continued to prevail. He insisted on presenting only intellectually honest arguments, knowing that shading the truth would prove counter-productive to establishing his position.

3. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:  Lincoln had an aptitude for dealing with peers effectively.

Lincoln’s surge toward greatness was fueled, in part, by what modern psychologists call “emotional intelligence.” Daniel Goleman defines the term as the capacity to maintain 1) self-awareness; 2) control of one’s emotions and impulses amidst changing circumstances; 3) self-motivation; 4) empathy toward others’ emotions; and 5) harmonious relationships, even when peers are in conflict. To maintain emotional intelligence on a daily basis requires bona fide self-control and tact. To maintain it while serving as commander-in-chief during a civil war, attending to an increasingly unstable wife and grieving over the death of one’s child required astounding self-awareness, emotional control, and the capacity to harmonize disparate factions. Lincoln’s ability to remain steady while leading the country through turbulence is evidenced by the following:

• Regardless of blunders that set back the Union cause during the Civil War, Lincoln did not engage in blaming, denigrating, or fault-finding. Occasionally, he would write letters venting his feelings about generals who had let him down, but he did not mail them.
• At the outset of Lincoln’s presidency, those with more education and political experience would level insults at him, perceiving that someone so unsophisticated and inexperienced could not possibly be up to the job. Lincoln refused to take the bait and retaliate, or even hold a grudge, because “the issues we face are too vast for malicious dealings.”
• In the face of constant criticism and genuine fear of losing the American republic, Lincoln remained stoic and did not panic. Aware of the power of words, the president insisted that his public and private messages were concise, clear, apt, logical, and carefully edited. Misunderstandings from ambiguous communications had to be avoided during such a critical time.
• Despite holding the powerful office of president, Lincoln’s ego remained in check. Only lesser men acted arrogantly or self-righteously.

4. SENSE OF PURPOSE:  Lincoln wanted to make a difference in the world.

Lincoln, unlike his father, had no desire to work with his hands. Rather, he aspired to make a living and gain distinction by utilizing his mind. Kaplan frequently describes Lincoln as an autodidact, a person who is self-taught and self-educated. A clever lexicographer might place a photograph of Lincoln next to that word. It is difficult to imagine anyone teaching himself more than our 16th president did.

Imagine learning the law with no instructor and to reach a level of proficiency to not only be admitted to the bar, but to try major lawsuits and argue appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Imagine mastering military history and battle tactics in a quiet room at the Library of Congress so that you remain several steps ahead of generals who graduated from West Point. Imagine having such command of the Bible and Shakespeare that you can quote the most appropriate passages at the most opportune times, in court or on the political stage. Abraham Lincoln pushed himself and rose to do all of these things, on his own, without mentoring from parents, teachers, colleagues, or superiors.

Lincoln’s self-education provided the foundation for his continual rise. Miller explains:

Lincoln developed rare powers of concentration and he would use them all his life. He developed a confidence that he could dig in books for what he wanted … and that confidence in his powers of understanding what was written on the page seems to have encouraged a broader self-confidence, in his judgment and his critical powers— let us call it a moral self-confidence.

Then Lincoln learned of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he was thunderstruck by its divisive, pro-slavery effect and refused to rest until he had done everything in his power to nullify it. Lincoln’s debates with Stephen A. Douglas, in which Lincoln crusaded against the expansion of slavery, provided Lincoln with a national platform that helped him to emerge as the most persuasive and eloquent spokesperson on the era’s most controversial issue.

When Lincoln was elected president, Southern states started to secede from the Union. After the Confederate Army attacked Fort Sumter, Lincoln’s highest purpose became to restore the United States to an indivisible nation, governed as are public, by majority rule. Lincoln’s resolve became such a personal crusade that if bringing about his desired, constitutionally mandated result required suspending the right to habeas corpus for a short time to prevent border state Maryland from having its infrastructure destroyed, then the president would do what it took, rationalizing the temporary infringement of constitutional rights: “A part can’t control the whole, to the destruction of the whole. … I will amputate a limb to save a life.”

As the war continued to rage, with no end in sight, Lincoln combined his two driving purposes — restoring the Union and ending slavery — by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1, 1863. The proclamation motivated and transformed the Union Army into a force fighting for liberation and facilitated the recruitment of African-American men into the Union Army.

In his most recent book on Lincoln, Tried by War, McPherson addresses the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation on the country and its president:

The proclamation completed the transformation of Lincoln’s policy and national strategy from a war for restoration of the old Union into a war to give the nation a new birth of freedom. … Upon executing the historic document, Lincoln told those in his inner circle, “I never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it.”

Lincoln achieved the sense of purpose he had set for himself as a child and reiterated over the course of his life. McPherson then puts the significance of the incident into perspective:

More than any other American, Lincoln’s name has gone into history. He gave all Americans, indeed all people everywhere, reason to remember that he had lived.

CONCLUSION

Doris Kearns Goodwin, in the final paragraph of her introduction to Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, provides an answer for why Lincoln should matter to us today:

After living with the subject of Abraham Lincoln for a decade, reading what he himself wrote and what hundreds of others have written about him, following the arc of his ambition, and assessing the inevitable mixture of human foibles and strengths that made up his temperament, after watching him deal with the terrible deprivations of his childhood, the deaths of his children, and the horror that engulfed the entire nation, I find that after nearly two centuries, the uniquely American story of Abraham Lincoln has unequalled power to captivate the imagination and to inspire emotion.

Happy 200th birthday, Abraham Lincoln! As lawyers, we are inspired by the brilliance, self-control, emotional intelligence, and sense of purpose you demonstrated throughout your life. You carried our nation through its most difficult challenge. We lift you up as the ultimate role model for our profession.

NOTES

[1] The State Bar of Texas is sponsoring the Lincoln bicentennial luncheon with the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Forth Worth, the SMU Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility, the Dallas Public Library, Winstead P.C., and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

[2] 1) Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief by James McPherson (Penguin Press 2008); 2) Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (Simon & Schuster 2005); 3) Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer by Fred Kaplan (HarperCollins 2008); 4) Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller (Knopf 2002);5) President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman by William Lee Miller (Knopf2008); and 6) Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness by Joshua Wolf Shenk (Houghton Mifflin 2005).

Pulitzer Prize winning Civil War historian James McPherson addresses this question in his book, “Tried By War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief” (Penguin 2008), and on Feb. 12 will come to Dallas and provide the answer in person for Lincoln’s 200th birthday party luncheon to be held at the Crescent Court Hotel.

McPherson’s book identifies the following characteristics that allowed our 16th commander-in-chief to preserve the United States and eliminate slavery, presumably in hopes that the information will be useful to our newly inaugurated president and anyone else holding a leadership position:

• Do not delegate critical thinking and decision-making to subordinates, even if they are specialists in a particular field. As president, Lincoln exhaustively schooled himself on military strategy so as to be in a position to direct the Union army, often in contravention of his underachieving West Point-educated military leaders. McPherson confirms the adage, “War is too important to be left to generals.”

• Never lose sight of the big picture. Upon taking office, Lincoln saw his ultimate constitutional responsibility to be restoring the Union, doing what it took to bring back into the fold the southern states that had seceded, and making sure no additional states joined them. To keep the border states in tow, on occasion that required having insurrectionists arrested who were striving for the secession result, and then suspending their constitutionally guaranteed right to the writ of habeas corpus. “I will amputate a limb to save a life. ... A part can’t control the whole to the destruction of the whole.”

• In addressing the enemy on disputed points, be nonnegotiable and willing to fight for key principles. Certainly, the Civil War could have ended quicker if Lincoln had been willing to negotiate a peace that allowed the South to remain an independent nation. And after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation at the war’s midpoint, he could have achieved a more expedited resolution if he had compromised on the issue of slavery. He told Congress in 1864, the Confederacy “can not voluntarily reaccept the Union; we can not voluntarily yield it. Between them and us the issue is distinct, simple and inflexible, and can only be tried by war and decided by victory.” With that uncompromising approach, after winning the war, Lincoln achieved full restoration of the Union and the total elimination of slavery in the terms of the South’s surrender.

• Never lose sight of political realities. Though Lincoln was privately opposed to the institution of slavery in the 1850’s, had he campaigned as an abolitionist during his 1860 campaign, he would not have been elected president. And had he sought to eliminate it in the war’s early years, the border states would have surely seceded and joined the Confederacy. He led the movement to end slavery only when he could present emancipation to his electorate as the best means for achieving a prompt and final means of winning the despised war because it gave his army a greater sense of purpose and allowed former slaves to join his troops at a time when mass reinforcements were needed.

Now, with these timeless meaty leadership lessons in the front of our brains, may we stop on Feb. 12 and join McPherson for lunch (go to www.dfwworld.org for details) in honoring the man who, says McPherson, “more than any other American, gave all people everywhere, reason to remember that he lived.”

If not talent, then what made the Beatles, Chinese math whizzes, the top Canadian teenaged hockey players and Bill Gates get to the top of the mountain in their respective fields? Gladwell says digging deeper into history’s greatest success stories reveals that they are all about people being engaged in an activity when a unique opportunity involving that activity arises, and then having the tenacity to seize it and milk it for all it’s worth.

After performing together in England for three years, the Beatles found themselves in 1960 booked into clubs that required them to play eight-hour gigs night after night in Hamburg, Germany. To create a daily repertoire for such an extended period of time necessitated their putting all their cumulative talents into the highest gear just to endure each night, experimenting with and blending together every imaginable musical thought that popped into their heads. By the time they concluded “the Hamburg crucible,” the Fab Four had separated themselves from all other rock and rollers of their era.

As a child, Bill Gates had the good fortune to have affluent parents who sent him to the top private school in Seattle. In the late ’60s, that school became the first to have its own “computer club.” Then a club member’s parent provided for the technology-oriented teenagers with virtually unlimited access to a computer at the University of Washington, allowing young Bill to start doing real-time programming while only an eighth- grader. He took off from there.

The tenacious succeed

It’s one thing to be presented with a life-changing opportunity, but quite another to have the wherewithal and tenacity to seize it. So what exactly is entailed in the circumstance of seizing such an opportunity? Both Gladwell and Colvin cite a study involving violinists over the course of a decade. Those who became the most accomplished were not those who distinguished themselves with their talent from a young age. No. The most acclaimed performers were those who practiced more than the rest of the pack — for essentially 10,000 hours — which Gladwell decides is the litmus test for ultimate performance excellence. The Beatles, before coming to America, and Bill Gates during adolescence devoted themselves to about 10,000 hours at their respective crafts before hitting the big-time.

Geoff Colvin points out it’s not just routine, repetitive practice that produces the world-class performer. It is “deliberate practice” fueled by total commitment requiring “furious hard work” driven by a “rage to master” that involves pushing oneself beyond what a person can currently do, and aimed at improving the various specific needs required to take the performer to an elite level.

This fury, this rage, this all-consuming commitment ultimately sustains itself, according to Colvin, by a passion fed by recognition, and by a “multiplier effect” that causes what was once a small advantage (the Beatles in the endless Hamburg gigs and Bill Gates on the computer as a teenager) to spark a series of events that produce far larger advantages such as their sustained commercial success.

To play off the titles of Gladwell’s prior books, having little to do with mere “talent,” the daily eight-hour performances in Hamburg for the Beatles and the unlimited access to the University of Washington’s computers for Bill Gates became their careers’ “tipping points,” and in a “blink” they knew they had found their lives’ callings.

The Beijing Olympics begin Aug. 8 and, like its Olympiad predecessors, will be the subject of concentrated international attention and round-the-clock television coverage for 18 consecutive days.

So what exactly is it that draws the world's focus to mass quantities of athletic competition every four years?

Talmage Boston and David Maraniss

Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss answers the question this way in his new book "Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World" (Simon & Schuster 2008): "The singular essence of the Olympic Games is that the world takes the same stage at the same time, performing a passion play of nations, races, ideologies, talents, styles, and aspirations that no other venue, not even the United Nations, can match."

The upcoming passion play of August 2008 in China should have many differences and similarities compared to its counterpart from the summer of 1960. Like all great nonfiction writers, Maraniss demonstrates that history merits our pleasure-reading time because of its capacity to confirm the paradox that over time, things change and they stay the same.

The specifics as to the most important changes in the Olympic Games over the last 48 years:

•  Racial injustice around the world has diminished, as apartheid and Jim Crow laws have evaporated, allowing open competition for all races and extinguishing the dichotomy of integrated athletic teams who live in segregated societies;
•  International gender injustice has diminished, such that the number of women's events now essentially equals the men's events, with no glass ceiling limitation as to what the female athlete can compete in with her Olympic sisters in sports;
•  Technology has significantly enhanced the Olympics, from photo finishes with instant replays to satellite-delivered live coverage in high-definition, and thus we will see more and see better competition whose times and results will be measured with greater accuracy; and
•  The greatest athletes in the world, not just the greatest amateur athletes, will be competing, as the days are gone when double standards of eligibility created international tension in the context of some countries having strict adherence and others totally disregarding the rules prohibiting compensation to athletes.

Yes, the Olympics have changed substantially since 1960, but they have also stayed the same, as Maraniss points out that, then and now:

•  Some athletes will attempt to enhance their performance through the discrete use of prohibited drugs;
•  Some countries will attempt to link their athletes' most outstanding performances to their perceived superior ideology;
•  The athletes themselves will care more about their competitions and less about political differences with their opponents, such that when races end, Arabs embrace Israelis, capitalists bond with communists, and rhetoric counts for little; and
•  The most successful of the elite Olympians will become bona fide legendary figures. In 1960, sprinter Wilma Rudolph, boxer Cassius Clay (who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali), decathlon champion Rafer Johnson, and barefooted marathon runner Abebe Bikila all won gold medals in their events and left their permanent marks in the annals of sport, and a handful of competitors will surely do the same next month in China.

For those seeking to expand their level of Olympic consciousness in preparation for the games in Beijing, David Maraniss will be in Dallas at the Fairmont Hotel for a luncheon sponsored by the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth on July 21 (go to www.dfwworld.org for more details and to purchase a ticket), to talk about "Rome 1960," when for 18 days, sports, the media and international politics at the height of the Cold War all came together in a perfect storm.