I've looked high and low at home through a collection of sports mementos, but can't find the one unforgettable photo that resonates at this particular time: an 8 x 10 glossy showing me sitting in the upper deck of the Louisiana Superdome – with the roof open.

One of these days, the construction-era picture may surface, but I'm not necessarily counting on it, since it was taken in 1973, meaning it may have been tossed before the havoc wreaked by hurricane Katrina lent that shot so much new significance.

Memories of the lost picture and the almost-lost city of New Orleans rush to mind as the National Football League prepares to lift the curtain on the rebuilt Superdome. The Big Easy's ongoing recovery will be duly celebrated with a televised Monday Night Football game between the Saints and the Atlanta Falcons. U2 will perform in a pre-game concert before ESPN viewers get to see if the Saints and electrifying rookie Reggie Bush can extend their winning streak to three games.

For many, this will be a bittersweet exercise in taking one mental step forward, while also reflecting on the chaos and desperation that engulfed the Superdome little more than a year ago.

For me, that trying chapter cannot wash away a host of mostly fond thoughts and recollections about sports in New Orleans, beginning with that 1973 sneak peek of the Superdome. At the time, I was on a hard-hat tour for reporters, many, like myself, who had converged on the city to cover the Sugar Bowl. The game held special significance that year because it brought together two undefeated teams, No. 1-ranked Alabama and No. 3-ranked Notre Dame in what amounted to a national championship game before there was such a thing.

At the time, I was a green sportswriter, not long out of Indiana University, who'd never been to New Orleans before and didn't envision how often I'd return. 

That first year, N'Awlins seemed more than a little foreign to this Midwestern boy.  With its French Quarter, po-boy sandwiches, parishes, and Mardi Gras mentality, I felt rather like a stranger in a strange, quasi-American land. Over the years, however, the place grew on me and came to be the sports destination I visited more than any other but New York. The well-named Superdome had a lot to do with that, since it has hosted more Super Bowls (six) than any other stadium, plus several college basketball Final Fours.

In 1973, though, the mammoth aluminum mushroom was just nearing completion on the city's downtown skyline, a controversial project whose price tag had soared to $134 million. Today, that figure wouldn't come close to covering Alex Rodriguez's 10-year, $252 million Yankees contract. Back then, the investment was being credited with sparking a resurgence in lagging community spirit and an urban building boom. The rebuilt dome is again serving much the same purpose.

That long-ago Sugar Bowl, however, occurred in the pre-dome era. It was played in the creaky, old Tulane Stadium, which once served as the home of the Saints and was demolished in 1980. The game provided me with my only firsthand look at Alabama head coach Bear Bryant, whose low, growly Southern voice was  practically unintelligble to a Northerner. It didn't matter, because he exuded "legend" through every sunburnt facial pore. And  his counterpart on the Notre Dame sideline, Ara Parseghian, was equally charismatic and capable of upholding his school's lofty gridiron traditions.

The game itself was everything you'd want in such a showdown, which ESPN rates as the fifth best bowl game in history. Notre Dame just managed to hang on for a 24-23 victory, which earned it the top spot in that season's final AP writers' poll.

Today, what stands out about that night was what happened before and after the game as much as what occurred during it.

Reporters were to ride buses from in front of the Sugar Bowl's headquarters hotel in the heart of the French Quarter, to the stadium. There was only one problem: it was New Year's Eve and things were kind of chaotic on Royal Street. Consequently, when the bus pulled up, anyone with a ticket to the game piled on. It was raining, the windows were up, and the air hot and humid. Some passengers grew faint, others mutinous, as the driver became almost hopelessly lost. By the time he arrived at the stadium, there was barely enough time to be seated before kickoff.

The return trip was just as eventful. In the post-game confusion, I wasn't able to find the press buses and realized I might have to walk miles back to downtown. In desperation, I banged on the door of a slow-moving bus. The driver opened the door and mercifully let me on, only the atmosphere on board was eerily funereal. The bus was filled  with dejected Alabama rooters. Nobody made a sound. The silence was a stark contrast to the boisterous 'Bama crowd that shared my hotel all week, and  periodically yelled out the windows "Roll Tide."

Something else happened after that game that continues to make me feel good about Notre Dame, which isn't to say I'm a big Fighting Irish fan. There was an absolute crush of reporters and fans outside the team's locker room. Security guards were about to close the doors, when Roger Valdiserri, the school's longtime sports information director, recognized me and reached out his arm to literally pull me in. I was the last person through the door. That he assisted a young sportswriter from The Christian Science Monitor in this way has always stood out as a wonderfully ecumenical act.

I never covered another Sugar Bowl, but I was present when the Super Bowl first was held in the Superdome in 1978. It was my introduction to domed stadiums. Dallas beat Denver, 27-10, in the only Super Bowl to ever name co-MVPs: Cowboy defensive linemen Randy White and Harvey Martin. In the press box before the game, an even bigger name in sports circles passed out promotional material: boxing impresario Don King, he of the electrocuted-like, straight-up hair.

I would return to New Orleans for two more Super Bowls, including for the Big Hurt put on the New England Patriots by the Chicago Bears, whose 46-10 victory was notable for one peculiar injustice: namely, the absence of longtime Chicago star Walter Payton from the game's scoring summary. Wide-body rookie defensive lineman Willam "The Refrigerator" Perry scored one TD on a goal-line plunge, but Payton should have gotten the call after all he'd done for the franchise over many years.

The other events that returned me to the Superdome were both college basktball Final Fours, the first of which, in 1982, saw University of North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan make the game-winning shot against Georgetown. Never had the NCAA championship event been played in such an oversized building, and to accommodate as many fans as possible, even upper-deck seats on the far side of the dome were sold. To test the view, I determined to trek up into this low-rent district and discovered that from such a distance, the nets on the baskets disappeared.

Reflecting on these and other memories, I'm reminded just how unusual New Orleans is as a sports city. It has no major-league baseball or hockey team, and its NFL entry has seldom made the playoffs during its 40-year existence.  In 1980, it played so poorly that fans took to wearing paper bags over their heads and calling the team the Aints.

Last season, the team had to evacuate the city after Katrina, and played their "home" games in San Antonio, Baton Rouge, La., and even New York. Such upheaval certainly didn't help an already questionable team, which wound up 3-13 amid rumors that it might be relocated permanently to San Antonio, or possibly to Los Angeles, which reportedly is in line for an expansion franchise.

Based on population figures, New Orleans was only the 43rd largest media market in the country even before Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, according to Nielsen research.  The city has shrunk considerably since then, so it's hard to justify keeping a big-league team on Poydras Street on a strictly dollars and cents basis.

The NFL seems committed to staying, though, at least for now, and for good reason. A lot of the league's Super Bowl history is wrapped up in New Orleans, and without a team there, the NFL would lose its built-in connections to one of America's premier party towns and one of its last remaining distinctive places. It's never been hard to get fans to flock to the Big Easy, with all its great restaurants, Dixieland jazz, and ample nightlife.

But to actually play in the city these days is a bit of an exercise in faith, which is why the the story of Saints quarterback Drew Brees is so encouraging. Brees, who played with the San Diego Chargers last year, signed a free-agent contract during the offseason with the Saints. Not only that, he and his wife bought a 100-year-old house in  New Orleans's Uptown neighborhood that they're eagerly refurbishing.

Asked by The New York Times why he'd bother investing time and money to relocate in a city so many others have evacuated, Brees, who is coming off a shoulder injury, said, "It felt natural to me. This city and I – we have some similarities. A lot of people think we may not come back."

Here's hoping they both enjoy bright futures.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to reading a sports classic. I happened upon another book I liked better.

The book I had intended to read,"The Boys of Summer," was named the second-best sports book of all-time by Sports Illustrated several years ago, but after fairly zipping through the first 150 pages of this Brooklyn Dodger retrospective, I put it aside after discovering "Best Seat in the House."

This autobiographical work by USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan caught my eye on a table of new sports releases at Barnes & Noble. I was curious not only because I once covered some of the same events as she did, but because the book's subtitle sounded intriguing: "A Father, a Daughter, a Journey Through Sports."

Here was an opportunity to learn how a young woman roughly my age, if younger than myself, had enjoyed a life in sports, first in the company of her dad, but later as a pioneering female sports writer.

Although Brennan dutifully acknowledges those who preceded her (such as Lesley Visser, Melissa Ludtke, Tracy Dodds, and more), she ranks as a trailblazer in her own right. In 1985, The Washington Post awarded her one of that newspaper's most coveted assignments, that of covering pro football's Washington Redskins. After three years on that beat, she became the Post's lead Olympics writer in 1988, when she was also elected the first president of the fledgling Association for Women in Sports Media.

While I wouldn't expect Brennan to remember, we once shared a booth with several other sportswriters at an airport diner in Havana, Cuba.  We were part of a group invited to tag along with the organizers of the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis, for the purpose of cementing good relations with the Cuban government and athletic officials. Ironically, I remember that the hamburgers served that night were not fit for human consumption, something not apparent right away. I sometimes have wondered if Brennan later arrived at the same conclusion.

Since that time, her name has only risen in sports media circles, as she's become not only a national columnist, but also a TV commentator for ABC News, ESPN, and NPR's Morning Edition. She also signed with a national speakers bureau.

What changed her life, Brennan readily acknowledges, was covering the Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in 1988. Harding's live-in ex-husband was ultimately implicated in an assault on Harding's chief American rival, Nancy Kerrigan, whose knee was clubbed by one of the husband's henchmen at the Olympic trials. Brennan was covering the trials and soon became perhaps the leading expert on this soap opera, which led to requests to appear on  "Nightline," "Today"  and a host of other shows. "I unwittingly became a Tonya-Nancy expert on-air," Brennan writes of her experience on the "sequin beat."

A host of new windows began to open in her career, including writing her first book, "Inside Edge: A Revealing Journey into the Secret World of Figure Skating," which became a bestseller. As a USA Today columnist, she hasn't hesitated to stir the pot, once criticizing Tiger Woods for not taking a stand on the controversial use of the confederate flag, and another time shining the spotlight on discriminatory policies at Georgia's Augusta National Golf Club, which hosts the Masters. She even had former White House press secretary Scott McClellan hang up on her in anger when she questioned President Bush's support of Title IX. 

Such behavior once led radio commentator Rush Limbaugh to label her a "liberal Democrat,' which made Brennan chuckle, since she grew up in a solidly Republican household. Her father was a Republican Party chairman in Toledo, Ohio, who insisted on flying the American flag every day. Jim Brennan also was a forklift company owner, former football player, and devoted family man who wanted his three daughters to enjoy the same opportunities as his son.

Christine was the child who from an early age couldn't get enough of sports, both playing and following them. Her dad, she says, never pushed her to be a fan, but happily obliged her interest.  Growing up only a five-minute walk from the University of Toledo campus, father and daughter, plus three younger siblings, regularly attended Rocket football and basketball games together, and later sometimes doubled up by going to University of Michigan football games as well.

Where their seats were wasn't as important as being there, her dad would say, underlining that "'We're here. We can smell it." The seat next to her father in any stadium, she explains, was always the best seat in the house. To this day, she still has her ticket stub from her first Big Ten football game in 1969, a Michigan-Ohio State showdown, viewed from the 50th row of the end zone of Michigan Stadium.

Jim and Betty Brennan's oldest daughter also loved to trade baseball cards, keep score, listen to Tigers, Cubs, and minor-league Toledo Mud Hens baseball games on her transistor radio, and play catch with her dad, who taught her to throw a football so it spiralled. He would attend almost every one of her games in high school during the infancy of Title IX, when girls' sports were a lower-intensity pursuit than they are today. After home basketball games at Ottawa Hills High School, the girls from both teams would repair to the home economics room for milk and cookies.

One reason, I suspect, that "Best Seat in the House" is so engaging is that for many years Brennan kept a daily diary. As a result, she isn't left to piece together fuzzy memories in recounting her journey from young autograph-seeking fan to first-rate sports journalist. The anecdotes are told cleanly, crisply, and with a wonderful feeling of accuracy, authenticity, and warmth.

Anticipating that I wanted to write a review of "Best Seat," I jotted notes as I went along, and found that every few pages yielded something worth sharing.

Among the finds:

• As a student at Northwestern University in the late 1970s, Brennan opted not to try out for any varsity sports, but she was an avid intramural athlete, organizing a raft of teams for her sorority. As a football rooter, she cheered faithfully for a Wildcats varsity team that won just one game she witnessed in her four years, a victory over Wyoming that she and her friends celebrated by dancing on the field.

• While in college, she submitted two letters to Sports Illustrated, and both were published about a month apart, a major morale-booster for a young fan with writing aspirations.

• Brennan's first newspaper job was as a city-desk intern with the Toledo Blade after her sophomore year of college. She was assigned to write obituaries, a task that she approached more seriously than any other she's ever had. In summarizing the responsibility she felt, she cites the journalistic adage: "It's my story, but it's their life."

• To help with the awkwardness of conducting postgame locker room interviews with male athletes, she remembers her dad's advice: "Just keep eye contact at all times, honey." But realizing that wasn't always possible while taking notes, Brennan substituted the usual stenographer-size notebooks with much larger ones so that whenever she had to look down, she only saw the page she was writing on.

• Former Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula appeared irritable when Brennan first directed a question to him as an intern with the Miami Herald. The next time she was at the team's training camp, though, Shula was cordial and began to treat her as one of his own kids. "For most people, he had two seconds for small talk," she recalls. "For me, sometimes there was a whole minute."

• While over 90 percent of her stories have been about men's sports, Brennan guesses that she writes more about women's sports than any other general sports columnist, which shows there's still a long way to go in leveling the coverage "playing field."

Near the end of "Best Seat in the House," a chapter entitled "Full Circle" provides a fascinating look at how some of Brennan's adult sports experiences have come to connect with those of the past. For example, in 1999 she, her dad, and her brother attended a late-season game at old Tigers Stadium during its last year year in use and managed to chat with famed sportscaster Ernie Harwell, who had been a familiar radio voice in their home. She also served as the emcee at a reunion/party to honor her high school field hockey coach.

Maybe best of all, Brennan came to be linked again with Chuck Ealey, the black Toledo quarterback she and her dad had cheered on during his 35-game winning streak at the position. Brennan and Ealey were made co-chairs of a charitable golf tournament in Toledo. Each year now, Brennan writes, they enjoy telling their unusual story of "the quarterback who won every game on the field and the girl who cheered him on from the stands."

As you watch the XXth Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, test your winter Olympics aptitude with an equal number of questions (The answers can be found here.):

1. Which of the following sports is not on the program of the 2006 Turin Games?
   1. freestyle skiing
   2. short-track speedskating
   3. ice sailing
   4. snowboarding
2. When were Olympic Winter Games first shown live on American television?
   1. 1952
   2. 1960
   3. 1968
   4. 1972
3. In which sport has the United States never won a medal of any kind?
   1. freestyle skiing
   2. luge
   3. ski jumping
   4. biathlon
4. How many countries are competing at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy?
   1. 45
   2. 73
   3. 87
   4. 101
5. Match these figure skating champions with the year the year and site of their triumph:

   Dorothy Hamill Kristi Yamaguchi Peggy Fleming Tara Lipinski Sarah Hughes

   1992, Albertville, France 1998, Nagano, Japan 1976, Innsbruck, Austria 2002, Salt Lake City, Utah 1968, Grenoble, France

6. Which Japanese city hosted the Winter Games in 1972 after first being selected to organize the 1940 Winter Games, cancelled during wartime?
   1. Tokyo
   2. Osaka
   3. Nagano
   4. Sapporo
7. In men’s slalom skiing, the minimum number of gates is:
   1. 35
   2. 45
   3. 55
   4. 65
8. Match the top speeds of the winter Olympics with the corresponding event:

   88 m.p.h. 85 m.p.h. 80 m.p.h. 55 m.p.h. 38 m.p.h.

   luge    Ski jumping    bobsled    long-track speedskating    downhill skiing

9. The US has hosted the Winter Games four times – twice in Lake Placid, N.Y., once in Salt Lake City, and once at what other Western ski area?
   1. Vail, Colo.
   2. Squaw Valley, Calif.
   3. Jackson Hole, Wyo.
   4. Sun Valley, Idaho
10. Which sport uses these terms: house, rock, vice-skip, and off-the-broom?
    1. curling
    2. short-track speedskating
    3. biathlon
    4. snowboarding
11. The 1993 Disney movie “Cool Runnings” was inspired by what group of winter Olympians?
    1. Italian cross-country skiers
    2. American hockey players
    3. Finnish ski jumpers
    4. Jamaican bobsledders
12. Although the 1980 US men’s hockey team is famous for upsetting the mighty Soviets, which country did it defeat in the championship game in order to win the gold medal?
    1. Czechoslovakia
    2. Finland
    3. Sweden
    4. Italy
13. Each of these male Olympians won two or more gold medals. Match them with their winter sport:

    Jean-Claude Killy Georg Hackl Dick Button Johan Olav Koss Bjorn Dahlie

    luge     cross-country skiing     alpine skiing     speedskating     figure skating

14. The biathlon combines what discipline with cross-country skiing?
    1. shooting
    2. horseback riding
    3. speedskating
    4. fencing
15. Which country has won the most medals in the history of the Winter Games?
    1. Sweden
    2. Russia/Soviet Union
    3. United States
    4. Norway
16. Which statement about long-track speedskating is false?
    1. The skaters race two at a time.
    2. Olympic competition is now held indoors.
    3. Skaters are required to wear helmets.
    4. Skaters switch lanes once per lap.
17. Which one of these female Olympians owns a record 10 medals, including four gold?
    1. speedskater Bonnie Blair
    2. nordic skier Raisa Smetanina
    3. figure skater Sonja Henie
    4. alpine skier Rosi Mittermaier
18. Only one of the following countries has ever hosted the Winter Games. Which one?
    1. Sweden
    2. Spain
    3. Finland
    4. Yugoslavia
19. Long-track speedskating is contested on a 400-meter oval. What is the approximate size of a short-track speedskating oval?
    1. 111 meters
    2. 147 meters
    3. 183 meters
    4. 222 meters
20. When Nancy Kerrigan won her silver medal in figure skating in 1994, who was the gold medalist?
    1. Michelle Kwan
    2. Oksana Baiul
    3. Tonya Harding
    4. Lu Chen

The answers can be found here.

Last Sunday, just after the New England Revolution had advanced to the Major League Soccer championship match over the Chicago Fire, that team's midfielder, Jesse Marsch, was asked his thoughts about the upcoming battle for the MLS Cup between the Revs and the L.A. Galaxy.

"The best player in the MLS [Landon Donovan] against New England," Marsch said.

Aside from saying "the MLS" (Really, would you say "the Major League Soccer"?), he's got it exactly right.

After eight months of matches among MLS’s twelve teams, the 2005 season has come down to one last game this Sunday, Nov. 12, in Frisco, Texas, between the suddenly superlative New England Revolution and the one-man-show, Los Angeles Galaxy.

This year’s championship is a rematch of MLS Cup 2002 in Foxborough, Mass., which the Galaxy won 1-0 on a sudden death goal by the league’s leading goal scorer and MVP Carlos Ruiz. Though it was disappointing for the hometown New England crowd, it was a just result. Three years ago, L.A. was MLS’s dominant club in the league’s dominant Western Conference. New England was an upstart, having fought from the basement to the top of the weak Eastern Conference by going undefeated in the last months of the season.

This year, the roles are reversed. 

Los Angeles has been a shadow of its former self since mid-last season, when the team unceremoniously dumped their coach, Sigi Schmid, and replaced him with Steve Sampson, best known for coaching the 1998 US World Cup team.  (By the way, the Galaxy was in first place when Sigi got canned. Apparently success isn’t good enough in L.A.)

Suffice it to say that Sampson has lived up to his reputation, leading the Galaxy into a three-way tie for eighth best in MLS. Really, you could argue that the Gals only made it into the playoffs by virtue of being in the Western Conference with two newbie expansion teams. Since only the worst two teams in each conference miss the playoffs, L.A. would have to be truly pathetic to not reach the postseason.

And L.A. has not been truly pathetic; the Galaxy has been successful in fits and starts.  Their success has depended on the mood of American soccer’s Golden Child, Landon Donovan.

You’ve likely heard a great deal in recent years about DC United’s wunderkind Freddy Adu, but make no mistake – the best player in American soccer right now isn’t Freddy, it’s Landon.

Donovan is the sort of player who can change a game with a single deft run through an opposing defense, who can take a team on his back and carry it to victory. He was a key contributor to the success of the 2002 US World Cup team.  He was the youngest player to be the US Honda Player of the Year when he won the award in 2002, and then he won it again in 2003 and 2004.  He led his former MLS team, the San Jose Earthquakes, to two MLS Cup titles, in 2001 and 2003.

(By contrast, Adu has yet to make an impact for the US national team, and has appeared in only one MLS Cup, for last year’s champion DC United, as a substitute.  Freddy has buckets of potential, but he hasn’t produced anywhere near the way Landon has.)

To be sure, the Gals aren’t just Landon and a bunch of schlubs. They’ve got Kevin Hartman, one of the league’s best, most consistent goalkeepers; up-and-comer Herculez Gomez, who scored 11 goals during the regular season; and L.A.’s own Energizer Bunny, Cobi Jones, the dreadlocked 10-year veteran who just keeps going and going.  Add to that a crowd of young players with high potential, like midfielder Ned Grabavoy and defender Ugo Ihemelu, and you’ve got a decent team.

Landon’s got pace, vision, and a deft touch. He scored 12 goals and added 10 assists during the regular season, thus being involved in half of L.A.’s 44 goals on the season.  He leads the postseason scoring table with 4 goals. As Landon goes, so goes the Galaxy.

Some argue that “Landon Donovan and 10 reasonably well-coordinated robots could win Major League Soccer's championship.”   That may be true.  But this year, Donovan’s got to overcome the New England Revolution.

The Revs used to be the league’s doormats.  Year in, year out, since MLS’s inception in 1996, the Revs were consistently poor finishers.  Every year, the Revs were good for a few 6-0 losses, a 10- or 11-game losing streak midseason, and either an early exit or complete absence from the postseason.

In 2002, that started to change.  Coach Fernando Clavijo, after a poor series of results early in the season, got canned and was replaced by assistant coach Steve Nicol, former stalwart defender for Liverpool and the Scottish national team.  The Revs continued somewhat unevenly under Nicol until late in the season, when everything clicked.  The Revs went on an undefeated tear all the way to the MLS Cup match in Foxborough, Nicol was named 2002 Coach of the Year, and forward Taylor Twellman won the league scoring race in his first MLS season.

Since then, Nicol has built up the Revs’ roster slowly and steadily, piece by piece. While the Revs were less than dominant in 2003 and 2004, they had become a team to be reckoned with; opponents could no longer mark off games against New England as sure-fire wins.

This year, everything clicked.  The former doormats have become the juggernauts of the Eastern Conference, and arguably of the league. (San Jose may have a better record than New England, but they racked up a lot of those wins against expansion sides Real Salt Lake and Chivas USA. I’d still bet on New England before San Jose.)

The Revs’ roster reads like a who’s who of MLS award winners:

• Four Rookie of the Year winners: Steve Ralston (1996), Jay Heaps (1999), Clint Dempsey (2004), and Michael Parkhurst (2005)
• Two scoring champions: Pat Noonan (2004) and Taylor Twellman (2002 and 2005).
• Six 2005 All-Stars: Dempsey, Shalrie Joseph, Noonan, Parkhurst, Matt Reis, and Twellman.
• One All-Star MVP: Twellman (2005)
• One Coach of the Year: Nicol (2002)
• One MLS MVP: Twellman (2005)

And that doesn’t include New England’s less-heralded-but-no-less-talented players: Uruguayan midfield maestro Jose ‘Pepe’ Cancela, Bermudan winger Khano Smith, Welshman and former Boston University Terrier Andy Dorman, and hardman defender Joe Franchino.

None of the Revs may stack up against Donovan individually, but New England has so much talent and so many ways to win that it doesn’t really matter. Whereas the Galaxy is basically a one-man show, the Revolution is a well-oiled machine. If it's firing on all pistons, watch out.

So who's going to win?  All things considered, New England should come out on top. If the Revs can contain Donovan and control the midfield the way they have over the season, L.A. should be merely a speedbump on the way to hoisting the franchise's first trophy.  But if the Revs go too easy and give Donovan space, the Galaxy could pull off the upset.

My prediction?  2-1 Revs.  But at this point, nothing would surprise me.  It could be a clinic by the Revs juggernaut or a one-man-show by Donovan.  Either way, it'll be an entertaining match.

This Sunday, 3:30 PM on ABC.  Take a break from football and check it out.

While drug scandals in the world of baseball grabbed sports headlines this week, a trio of sports stars quietly retired from a game that millions of Americans love to follow -- when they can find coverage. American soccer legends Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Joy Fawcett ended their national playing careers in a match against Mexico in Carson, Calif., Wednesday night. The US won 5-0.

The world wasn't quite paying attention the way it is now when Hamm became the youngest player to join the National Team at 15 in 1987. In the years that followed, Hamm, Foudy, and Fawcett went from near obscurity to a crowd of 90,000 -- plus millions of TV viewers chanting them on to World Cup victory in 1999. Their individual drive, team dedication, and patience with thousands of high-decible fans changed the history of American soccer forever.

Hamm didn't stir the back of the net during her last game Wednesday. But her record 158 goals -- the highest in the history of world soccer for men and women -- is firmly set. So are her Olympic team golds (1996, 2004) and World Cups (1991,1999). Her single-handed ability to win the hearts of hundreds of thousands of young fans, known as "Screaming Mias," gave confidence to investors to establish the world's first women's professional soccer league. FIFA calls the superstar striker one of 125 greatest living players; People magazine once called her one of the "most beautiful" famous faces.

But when the world focused on her face, she turned it back toward soccer. And when the world of sports highlighted her skill and undying thirst to drive toward the goal, the "reluctant superstar" was always quick to praise her teammates.

A soccer-mom blog this week recalls this quote Hamm once said to a reporter who asked what it was like to be the best player in the world:

"Ask me that question when I can dominate on both offense and defense like Kristine Lilly does. Ask me that question when I can head a ball like Tisha Venturini, defend as well as Joy Fawcett, play an all-around game like Julie Foudy."

With nearly the same number of assists as her staggering total of goals, she knew a single athlete does not a soccer team make.

Hamm left the game Wednesday wearing the name Garciaparra on her back, the name of her equally famous Chicago Cub shortstop husband, Nomar. Even though her undeniable legacy will keep "Mia" as a household name for years to come, the sight of the No. 9 jersey swooping toward the goal, eyes flashing, is a vision that will be sorely missed.

Minutes after she took her exit, Hamm was joined by No. 11, Julie Foudy. While Hamm was the marketing success, Foudy was the genius communicator. She was the mouth of the team. Leadership on the soccer field must be clear and Foudy's teammates had no trouble hearing her or laughing at her quick wit.

Foudy's dexterity on the field patterns her far-reaching passions and interests. At 29, she became the youngest president of the Women's Sports Foundation, an organization dedicated to furthering women's sports. Later, she proved herself an able ambassador on Capitol Hill while serving on a committee to make recommendations on Title IX to President Bush.

Her fight against child labor abuses had her inspecting soccer balls and the quality of factory conditions in Pakistan, earning her the recognition of becoming the first woman and the first American to win FIFA's Fair Play Award in 1997. And she worked tirelessly with Uniroyal Top Soccer program to create opportunities for US children with disabilities to play soccer.

But if Hamm and Foudy were the public faces, Joy Fawcett willingly kept the focus closer to home. As ueber soccer mom, Fawcett's career blazed the trail of mother-athletes. She seamlessly circled on and off the national team to give birth three times. And for five years Fawcett coached the women's UCLA women's soccer onto the national radar. (If you thought your day was busy, read about a typical day from 1997 in this mother-coach-national player's life.)

Fawcett doesn't have a foundation website like Hamm , or a soccer camp like Foudy. Fawcett's website is more like an unfinished scrapbook by a harried mother, sprinkled with anecdotes from her wedding day, pictures of children's parties, and a few sentences of angst about uprooting her family to pursue her dreams .

But ask her teammates and they will tell you about the power of her defensive game. Guarding the goal like a mother bear, Fawcett wielded an uncanny ability to chase down balls that soared over her head and cut the ball back with the outside of her foot -- all at full speed. Former national coach Tony DiCicco once called her the "best defender in the world."

And so it was Wednesday, on a December night in California, that three of women's soccer strongest lights spent one last hour patiently signing autographs of eager fans, perhaps wondering to themselves about what was coming next. We can't help but wonder, too.

I’m still scratching my head over how I could be a nightly viewer of NBC’s Olympic coverage and not see more than a short review of US women’s softball action, while being served a steady diet of women’s beach volleyball (I've seen enough of Misty May and Kerri Walsh to be their coach).

The American softball players put on a performance for the ages, giving up just one run in nine games and outscoring the opposition 51-1. That lone run, by the way, came in the gold medal game against Australia, which the US won 5-1 for its third Olympic championship in three tries. US dominance in softball is reminiscent of that enjoyed by the American men’s basketball team through the 1960s.

The women’s softball squad is probably the closest thing the Olympics have to a Dream Team at this point – even more overpowering than the women’s impressive basketball contingent.

In some ways, the softball players may be a little too good, especially in the pitching department. Hardly anybody seems able to make consistent contact against the windmilling American hurlers, whose pitches must look like BBs hurtling toward the plate.

If baseball, as the saying goes, is 90 percent pitching, then high-level fastpitch women's softball must be about 95 percent pitching. In fact, if I could change one thing about the game, I’d move the pitching rubber back seven feet from its current distance of 43 feet, which still seems a little too close to home plate for comfort. Sensing the need to adjust the pitching distance, three more feet were tacked on before the Olympics (and the outfield fences moved back from 200 feet to 220 feet).

The dimensions are moving in the right direction, but more tweaking – possibly including with the size and liveliness of the ball – might further enhance the game. Of course, the women on this year’s Olympic team would say the dimensions are perfect and that with the proper training, hitters can see blazing underhanded deliveries plenty good enough. The team benefited from some innovative ocular training before the Olympics. Batters practiced using a cannon that fired tennis balls at 150 m.p.h. Not only that but they homed in on identifying the color of the ink on the ball and what number was printed on it. At first, this seemed an impossibility, but through repetition the players learned to mentally slow down the ball. “When you see that big red five flying right at you, you’re like, ‘Oh, this is cool.'"

• I tip my hat to Michael Phelps, a phenomenal swimmer, who richly deserved those eight medals (including six gold) he won. It almost seems though, that swimming has too many events that call on the same general skill set. Yes, there are races for different strokes (back, breast, butterfly, and freestyle) and racing distances, but good swimmers enjoy more multiple–medal opportunities than athletes in most other Olympic sports.

• One fact that really struck me during my years covering the Olympics is how reporters work different “shifts” depending on where they’re from. This became quite apparent at the 1984 Winter Games in Sarajevo, where I shared a two-room suite with a British journalist. We were there for nearly three weeks and never saw each other. The only reason I knew he was a Brit was from the English toothpaste and shaving supplies he left in our common bathroom. The same sort of situation occurred again in Calgary in 1988, when I heard but never saw the German journalists in the room right next to mine.

• When you watch the Olympics you’re reminded of what real reality TV is all about. The feeling and emotion are genuine, not manipulated. Although not written for the Olympics, the famous introduction from ABC’s long-running Wide World of Sports is appropos: The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat…the human drama of athletic competition….”

• Where would we be in our understanding of the ancient Olympics without all those wonderfully preserved Greek vases? The artisans who crafted them were the sports photographers of their day.

• You can usually count on a few new wrinkles in the television coverage of the Olympics These Games have been no different. One I’ve enjoyed is SimulCam replay technology that shows two people doing the same dive side by side. This allows the analyst to point out the differences in execution and artistry that account for different scores. So what else should TV consider in the future? Maybe a mobile camera suspended over the swimmers. It shouldn’t be too hard to set up and it would put viewers even more in the race than the coverage already does.

• One of the funny little moments early in the Games occurred during a medals-award ceremony, when a couple of swimmers, unsure of the protocol, appeared to ask each other if they should leave their olive wreaths on or take them off during the playing of the national anthem. Word apparently got around that keeping them on was OK.

• It’s a good thing the Olympics move around, because the variety of backdrops generate their own special memories. In Athens, they’ve been especially spectacular. The road cycling event through the city created one of the most dramatic sports panoramas in Games history as the course wended it way past the city's major historical attractions. And speaking of visual beauty, the main Olympic stadium is a stunning architectural feast, with its new gracefully arched, giant plastic-canopies, which were added to the existing stadium to transform it into a modern landmark and shield spectators from intense sunlight (specially coated panels reflect 60 percent of the sunlight).

• It’s common knowledge that there’s a lot of grabbing, pulling, and elbowing under the water's surface in polo, so at future Olympics, why not create underwater windows for judges to watch for fouls or place scuba-wearing referees in the pool to check for unnecessary roughness?

• One of the best Olympic-themed TV commercials is also one of the simplest. It’s for insurance company AIG and depicts the letter “I” as a gymnast swinging from a line stretched over the “A” and “G” in the company's logo. Occasional wisps of powder provide a telling detail. Gymnasts use lots of the stuff to improve their grip on the various apparatuses.

• Maybe it’s a case of stereotyping, but it seems odd to find Chinese women playing beach volleyball, looking every bit like Californians.

• Just getting to the Games has to be a terrific lift for Iraq, but for the soccer team to play so well has been especially inspiring given that under the old regime members of the team were subjected to torture and humiliation when they performed below the expectations of Uday Hussein, the country’s former soccer and Olympic boss.

• The International Olympic Committee is reportedly considering dropping three sports after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Baseball, softball, and modern pentathlon are on the bubble. Here’s guessing they'll all stick, partly because the IOC has always been very reluctant to drop sports. The last cut was horse polo after the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Although horses make modern pentathlon an expensive sport for athletes and organizers, the five-event competition was devised by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, father of the modern Games, and first incorporated in 1912. Therefore, it’s probably protected by tradition. Maybe, though, they should drop the equestrian portion of the event and stick with the other four tests – swimming, shooting, running, and fencing.

Softball may be a little too much of a US showcase at the moment for some Olympic officials, but that in all likelihood will change before too long. Plus, it’s a women’s team sport and the Olympics are big on gender equity these days. Baseball may be facing the most serious challenge for survival. Baseball stadiums are expensive to build and can be white elephants in host countries where baseball is not a popular sport. Then, too, Olympic officials have critized the sport for not getting all its top players to the Games. Major leaguers, have been no-shows and according to Commissioner Bud Selig it's going to stay that way. He's more interested in a possible World Cup-like tournament that could be arranged out of season so as to avoid disrupting the pennant races.

• Andy Roddick, the reigning US Open tennis champion, made this cogent observation about his disappointment in losing at the Olympics: “It’s not the biggest thing in our sport,” he said, “but it’s the biggest thing in sports.”

• Give American shooter Matt Emmons credit for being philosophical about the momentary lapse of concentration that may have cost him the gold medal in the 50-meter, 3-position rifle event. Emmons fired at the wrong target on his ninth shot, aiming at the adjoining target of Austria’s Christian Planer, who was in the lane next to his. A former gold medallist in the event, Emmons had a commanding lead when he commited the error, which resulted in a zero score and dropped him into eighth and last place in the final. “I’ll live to shoot another day,” he said stoically, already anticipating competing in Beijing in 2008.

• I never cease to be amazed when the male gymnasts in the floor exercise start spinning like tops, their legs straight out, from a sitting position.

• One of the best things I ever discovered in an Olympics goodie given to reporters was a small wood-handled metal spatula or turner at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. It was a memento from a McDonald’s cooking-crew Olympics (obviously for flipping hamburgers) and it has been a favorite kitchen-drawer utensil long after cap, T-shirts, and other freebies vanished.

• Have you ever wondered how coaches who tower above pint-size female gymnasts manage to teach their charges to do all those incredible tricks and routines without actually showing them? I have.