Oh, so sad, but oh, so true.

how “chicks dig the long ball.” Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, two great

pitchers for the Atlanta Braves, are fed up with the girls worshipping Mark McGwire (this was before steroids, and McGwire was setting the single-season home run record). “Hey, girls, Cy Young winners over here!” yells Maddux, in frustration. The two pitchers decide, why fight it? They’ll become home run hitters. I remember a montage of Maddux and Glavine lifting weights, running stadium steps, flailing at balls in the batting cage, and comparing their biceps in the steam room. Greg and Tom think they have it all figured out . . . but at the end of the commercial, Heather Locklear walks by and asks, “Hey, have you guys seen Mark?” (You can find the commercial on YouTube; the commercial is priceless, even if you are not a baseball nut.)

In another Nike commercial, some hot European model in lingerie summarized the problem for the pitchers: “A low ERA just isn’t sexy.”

When I was running high school track, something similar would drive me and the other distance runners crazy. I would go out in a dual meet and pound out an 880 and my coach would ask me to double, so I would come back and bust my gut to crack 10 minutes in a two-mile race. My coach would pat me on the back, and then I would go throw up under a nearby tree. A couple of pimply, nerdy, skinny sophomore distance guys might come by and mumble, “Nice run, dude.”

Meanwhile, some refugee from the football team would take 10 seconds to run a hundred yards and then spend the rest of the afternoon making time with the cheerleaders. The cheerleaders were bored and hated being stuck cheering for track and field all afternoon, and the two-mile was particularly irritating to the girls because they had to cheer each lap—those girls had to cheer eight times in one race, which they felt was a slightly abusive work assignment. That was just too much work, especially when the girls had to cheer for the pimply, nerdy, skinny distance runners.

ic was a series of Nike baseball commercials in the late 1990s all about

The distance guys get no love. Chicks dig sprinters.

And 30 years later, it’s the same damn thing! At 6:00 a.m., on a cold and dark January morning, I go out and fire off a perfect set of 800-meter repeats at track practice: 3:03, 3:01, 3:00, 3:00, 3:00, 2:58, 2:56, 2:54, 2:49. (OK, not Olympic times, I admit, but I was pretty happy!). Barb is right behind me as we pull a train of runners around the track again and again, every one of the runners younger than me. People are patting me on the back, Barb is saying my pacing is beautiful, Julie is telling me how effortless my running looks, Carol is yelling, and Tim and I tap fists. Then David, our resident sprinter, blasts out a single 200-meter dash, scattering all of us where we were lounging around on the home stretch waiting for the next 800. (Track! Track! Clear the track!). He looked great—perfect form, arms pumping, legs up, really really fast.

Immediately, all of us folks training for the Boston Marathon are forgotten. In seconds, Carol and Cilla are gathered around David like he was made out of candy. Julie is looking up at him, batting her pretty blue eyes: “Wow, golly, how fast was that? You are so wonderful . . . what are you training for?” The last time I saw Julie look like that at anything, she was at Manolo Blahnik’s checking out shoes.

Come on, girls, you are grown-ups now! We’ ve got Boston qualifiers over here!

Pheidippides got eternal glory and probably inspired a horde of statues and monuments. We know he did not get the girl. Actually, think about it—how did