Phelps Had Great Models to Emulate

Baltimore's Michael Phelps made history in Beijing, earning eight gold medals in this year's Olympics.  (Neil Hodge/USA Swimming)

By: Keith Mills

As Michael Phelps stood on the victory stand last weekend in Beijing, wearing his eighth gold medal around his neck, Cal Ripken Jr. and Juan Dixon came to mind.

Like Phelps, Ripken and Dixon are homegrown high school athletes who reached the pinnacles of their sports while earning the respect of their coaches and teammates, the admiration of their opponents and the adulation of an entire nation.

Of course they weren't the first Baltimore natives to win championships on the national and international stages, and hopefully they won't be the last.

West Baltimore's Babe Ruth rewrote the record books and is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time. Notre Dame's Bob Williams is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and a local icon to those who competed against him at Loyola Blakefield. The same can be said about Southern High School's Al Kaline, who helped the Detroit Tigers win the 1968 World Series and is to this day considered one of the classiest and most dominating athletes ever to come out of Baltimore.

And there have been more.

David Wingate and Reggie Williams won national championships at Georgetown and then thanked coach Bob Wade and their teammates at Dunbar High School. Sam Cassell and Keith Booth did the same when they won NBA championships in Houston, Chicago and Boston. Vaughn Hebron thanked coach Frank Tricka of Cardinal Gibbons and his rec coaches in Arbutus after helping the Denver Broncos win Super Bowl XXXII. Theresa Andrews, Anita Nall and Beth Botsford helped pave the way for both Phelps and Katie Hoff with gold medal performances that put the tiny North Baltimore Aquatic Club on the international swim map.

But Phelps' remarkable run at Olympic history brought this observer back to Aberdeen's Ripken and Lake Clifton and Calvert Hall's Dixon.

Why? All three were given a physical gift and maximized it to its fullest potential. All three did it with class and modesty, and all three are among the greatest competitors in modern American sports.

Anyone who saw Dixon play as a skinny ninth-grader at Lake Clifton had to think, "Good player? Yes. National champion? No way."

Anyone who saw Ripken play shortstop as a skinny freshman at Aberdeen in 1975 probably said, "Nice player with great potential? Yes. Hall of Famer and baseball's ‘Iron Man?’ Hardly."

And anyone who saw Phelps splash through the water as a 9-year-old had to say, "Olympic champion? Are you kidding?"

But all three, in their own ways, with their own ferocious drive and dedication, had the country eating out of their hands after achieving a level of success that many seek, yet few reach -- and in the case of Ripken and Phelps, none have.

Following two years at Lake Clifton, Dixon headed to Calvert Hall. While playing in a summer league at the Madison Square Rec Center in East Baltimore, Dixon was a scoring and defending machine. He never stopped moving, never stopped working and dominated the game so much that two of his opponents walked off the court in frustration midway through the fourth quarter.

It was no surprise when Maryland coach Gary Williams took a chance on Dixon when many other big-time programs did not. Dixon's work ethic was unmatched, his first step unstoppable, the range on his jump shot unending and his heart the size of the city he came from. And in 2001, the entire country saw what so many hoops fans in Baltimore had known for years -- Dixon, the skinny, 6-foot-3 kid from the east side, would find a way to get it done.

It was the same with Ripken. In the 1978 Class A state championship baseball game, he was tall and thin and pitching against a potent Arundel High team featuring one of the state's premier lineups. Ripken one-hit the Wildcats, displaying his now famous competitiveness and toughness, proving he was one of the country's top prospects.

Three years later, he was with the Orioles, and it wasn't long before I witnessed the famous Ripken work ethic firsthand -- and it was on the basketball court. It was a pickup game for nothing but pride and competition, and Ripken played it like it was the seventh game of the NBA Finals. He dove for loose balls, rebounded like Moses Malone and, like his dominating performance in the '78 state title game, found a way to win.

As a gangly 9-year-old kid who was content playing out of the pool, Phelps ran around at Meadowbrook Swim Club in Mount Washington. Seven years later he was swimming laps there with paddles on his hands, a nasty look of intensity and focus on his face and coach Bob Bowman in his ear. There were no television cameras, Phelps Phan Clubs or phone calls from President George W. Bush. There were just Phelps and Bowman, lap after lap after lap.

Phelps grew up watching Ripken from his Rodgers Forge living room and at Camden Yards. He watched Ray Lewis and the Ravens win Super Bowl XXXV and was glued to the television when Dixon and Maryland won the NCAA basketball championship.

Somewhere along the way, the 2003 Towson High School graduate figured out that the "Ripken Way" and later the "Dixon Way" was the way he himself should go.

Phelps has dominated the same way, but he's content to let his 14 Olympic gold medals do his talking. He has combined his incredible physical gift with a Ripken-like work ethic, a Dixon-like resolve and a Lewis-like take-no-prisoners competitiveness that can't be taught.

You either have it or you don't. Tiger Woods has it. So did Michael Jordan. And it was those two incomparable champions NBC's Bob Costas compared Phelps to during the first night of the U.S. swimming trials in June.

"There's been a lot of things written and said comparing you to Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan," Costas said. "Your thoughts on that?"

"Watching Tiger have an injured knee and still come out and play out of this world," Phelps said. "Jordan being sick, putting up 60 points in the playoffs. It's things like that that make athletes the best and to be in the same sentence with them, to even have the possibility, it's an honor for me." Humble and modest out of the pool, Phelps destroys his opponents in it with a quiet confidence that comes from beating the best in the world.

It was evident in Phelps’ eyes three months ago at NBAC's Gala that featured Phelps and Hoff and flaunted the club's miraculous Olympic and age-group success. He had the look of a champion who knew he was the best, but without the arrogance to take it for granted.

It was in Dixon's eyes in Atlanta a few hours before Maryland beat Indiana, and it was in Ripken's eyes numerous times, but especially at Camden Yards on the afternoon of his 2,131st consecutive game, when he knew all the hard work, sacrifice, pain, commitment and dedication had paid off.

That night at Meadowbrook, it was Phelps who was back home under the spotlight and savoring every minute of it.

"Are you ready, Michael? How many medals will you win, Michael? Can you break Mark Spitz's record?"

He heard every question a dozen times that night and a thousand times since.

"We're really looking forward to competing at the Olympics," he said. "It's an honor and a privilege. Only my coach and I know what my goals are. Hopefully, we'll be able to reach them." It's now safe to say he has.

Issue 3.34: August 21, 2008