But it’s hope.

The National League West is a joke. Not a good joke, but a joke. The Toronto Blue Jays would be leading the NL West, but instead the poor Jays are flying 12.5 games out of first in the rugged American League East.

The Rockies are blessed to play in the NL West and they’re blessed that fans have lingering memories of last season’s astonishing late run that carried a team and a state all the way to the World Series.

Everyone - and that includes me - keeps waiting for the real Rockies to emerge, for the team that won so many games in October to awaken. It’s been a long wait.

But, of course, hope lingers. If the Rockies can finally put together one truly blazing run, they could zip right back to the playoffs. This isn’t just, of course, but it keeps hopes alive for a strange season,  

The Crusher became famous by touring the professional wrestling circuit in the 1960s and 1970s.  According to legend, he trained with two full kegs on his shoulders. He battled - if that’s the right word - against such greats as Superstar Billy Graham, Baron Von Raschke and the immortal Mad Dog Vachon.

In the mid 1970s, I spent many nights in downtown Denver watching pro wrestling. After the bouts, I visited with wrestling fans at White Spot,  which was Denver’s (better) version of Denny’s. To my surprise, dozens of these older fans believed the bouts were real. 

They weren’t, but they were a lot of fun. It was enormously entertaining, and seriously funny, to watch this theater of the absurd. The Crusher and  his buddies were fake athletes,  but great actors. This battle between Good - say, the Crusher - vs. Evil - usually Superstar Billy Graham - was a blast to watch.

And I still believe the greatest sports quote of all  time came from The Crusher. He describes a long-ago cage match with the Mad Dog, full of blood and wounds.

“I had to go to the hospital and he had to go to the veterinarian,”  the Crusher recalled.

The maitre-de tried his best - and he tried very diligently - to make  us uncomfortable with his haughty, you’re-not-good-enough-to-be-here demeanor, but he failed.  Our table had enough experience with uptight maitre-des back in the States to survive his snooty attacks.

It was a fun night. We ate a few dozen yards away from the east gate to the Forbidden City. The food was great and the water was delicious. After finding out that we had paid $15 for the bottle of water, we understood the quality.

Eating at a ridiculously pretentious, overpriced restaurant is one of the great pleasures of life. Once every two years or so, it’s smart to get a taste of the good life and discover that it is good, but not a nightly requirement.

So there’s no rancor in this message. On Sunday, a reader from Monument complained that I “always” mix politics and sports. In the 51/2 years I’ve written columns for The Gazette, I might have used that mix a half-dozen times. My conservative friends didn’t appreciate my observations about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity - who are entertainers, not politicians - and said  they were intensely against any intrusion of politics into The Gazette’s sports coverage.

 But in the most blatantly political of any of my Gazette columns, there were no complaints from my conservative brethren. I applauded George W. Bush for speaking against steroids in his State of the Union address. It was a brave moment in his presidency, one of his finest hours.

And not one conservative reader had a problem with what I wrote.

One of those millions is my daughter, Ruth. I’m a little surprised. Phelps, America’s Swim King, is a bit of a nerd and a big-time momma’s boy.

That’s fine with Ruth.

“O.K., Phelps is a nerd but that term isn’t something that my generation sees as a bad thing,” Ruth told The Gazette in an exclusive interview. “I heard on the news
that on Google one of the top 10 searches was Micheal Phelps’
girlfriend. That just shows that every girl in America wants to date
him, myself included. ”

But isn’t Phelps less than handsome?

“He does have a funny or ‘interesting’ face and his teeth are kinda odd. But I think the thing that makes him attractive is his drive and his amazing body. Also, watching the
interviews he seems down to earth.”

But what about the momma’s boy thing?

“I was watching an interview and he was talking about his mom and it was so cute. I admire how he seems to be such a momma’s boy. That isn’t what most athletes portray.”

Tell me more about this “nerds are cool” trend.

“It is almost in style to like the nerds like Justin Timberlake. It is just right now Micheal
Phelps is the nerd who is popular to like.”

I understand. Kind of.

Russians where Russia shirts. Serbians wear Serbia shirts. The message is clear. I’m here to support my homeland.

Americans don’t wear America shirts.

We embrace objectivity in American journalism. We try not to root for anybody. I can almost hear, even though I’m many,many miles from home, those who will howl about bias, but I disagree. American journalism is remarkably unbiased. When compared with the rest of the world, American journalists are bland. We stay away from opinion. We try to listen to both sides.

Wish I could read Russian newspapers. I have a feeling the publications aren’t so strong when it comes to objectivity.

The Americans had blown it. That’s the truth.

After reading my column on the game, U.S. Soccer Federation communication manager Neil Buethe wrote an e-mail note. He questioned my soccer knowledge, which is fine. My soccer-freak son Caleb questions my soccer knowledge all  the time.

What bothered me is the excuse-filled tone of the note and the way he,  too, tried to put a happy face on a sad game. The team’s players, he wrote, return to America “with their heads held high,  knowing they played excellent soccer.”

Wait  a minute. ”Excellent soccer” doesn’t get anyone  sent home.  “Excellent soccer” keeps teams alive in tournaments, and the Americans are done.

Happy, oblivious talk will doom  America’s soccer future. In Greece and Spain and Argentina, basketball players once faced the seemingly impossible challenge of defeating the United States. These players faced up reality’s hard truths, declined to make excuses and made their visions come true. They didn’t draw happy faces on defeats.

The U.S. team failed in its mission here in Beijing and anyone who says they succeeded is standing in the way of  future success. If the U.S. wants to compete with the world’s powers - and I believe America will eventually rank as a world power -it must call failure what it is.

Failure is failure. Pure and simple.

Iran earned a place in the Olympic basketball tournament. It’s still tough for me to picture Iranians playing basketball, that pure American game, but they do. Not very well, mind you, but they do play.

I asked U.S. point guard Deron Williams if he would have liked to play Iran.

“Why you asking?” he said,  obviously not very happy.

I told him it was a simple question. Would you have liked to play Iran.

“I’m talking about basketball, not politics,” Williams said.

I asked about basketball, not politics, but whatever. Maybe a battle on the basketball court would be good for relations between these archrivals.

Maybe at the next Olympics.

In Beijing, that isn’t so true. Black Audis, the car of choice for high-level government types, often come roaring through lights, with the driver honking the horn and flashing lights and demanding that all other cars get out of the way.

Cabs won’t pick them up.

Most Chinese cab drivers don’t speak English and most - make that all - American journalists don’t speak Chinese. It appears Chinese cabbies want to avoid the hassle of trying to communicate with non-Chinese passengers.

On Thursday night, I walked through the Olympic grounds to a restaurant. After our meal, we tried to walk back, but the grounds were blocked off in preparation for Opening Ceremonies. That left us with a long,  long walk. We tried hailing cabs. That didn’t work. One of my buddies even resorted to standing in the middle of the road.  That didn’t work, either. The cabs were just whiz by him.

Finally, after a long wait, we found a friendly cabbie willing to work through the language barrier.