Mike Celizic

BEIJING - Manny’s going to have to be Manny without me. The NFL will have to get its season underway without my helpful advice. A-Rod will be deprived of my thoughtful comments on his personal life.

I can see the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube from our headquarters here, and they are without question the coolest Olympic venues ever built. They will be the center of the sports universe during this week leading up to the Games and the 17 days of the Olympics. It’s going to be Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff and munchkin gymnasts and turbo-charged sprinters; beach volleyball and Olympic basketball and boxing, wrestling, weight-lifting, soccer, martial arts, and a whole lot of athletic pursuits that exist for the general public just once every four years.

After that, I’m taking a little vacation, and it’ll keep me away until mid-September. Can Charlie Weis get Notre Dame turned around? I’ll find out when I get home.

A lot of dedicated American sports fans aren’t great fans of the Olympics. They follow their teams and their favorite sports, and anything else is a distraction. I understand that. We’ve always tended to think that our sports are the best sports, and whatever the rest of the world is interested in isn’t nearly as important.

But the Olympics have always had a special hold on me. They are the original international competition, and today they represent the most physically talented of more than six billion human beings on the planet. They are gathering in the home country of 1.3 billion of those people, a country that closed itself to the world for centuries and now wants to show us all how far it’s come.

The regular course of events should stop for such a gathering, just as it did for the Greek world during the original Olympics beginning 2,700 years ago.

I’m going to miss a lot. Baseball’s heading for the final turn and the top of the stretch run in a season that has been full of surprises. I probably say every year that we’re watching some of the best pennant races ever, but this year I really mean it. When was the last time the AL East, baseball’s power conference, has been so tight and uncertain? As I write this the Yankees are in third place, the Red Sox in second and the amazing Rays still hanging on to first place in the AL East. The Mets and Phillies are locked in mortal combat in the NL East, with the plucky Marlins hanging in there, too.

The Brewers have awoken from a sleep worth of Rip Van Winkle and are pushing the Cubs, and the Twins are giving the White Sox all they can handle. Manny’s in Dodger blue, which, he informs us, is his most favorite color in the world. And the NL West is still engaged in a desperate struggle to see which team can get two games above .500 — and stay there.

I’ll check the scores and the standings, but that’ll be it. I’ll miss commenting on it, but there are bigger stories here. That’s America’s pastime; this is the world’s festival of sweat. I’ll have to catch up later.

The NFL will be in Week 3 by the time I get home. The good part about being here is that I won’t have to deal with training camp dramas and the dreariness of pre-season games. More good news: I’m freed from the obligation to pay attention to the Brett Favre soap opera. Even better news: I won’t get to watch “Hard Knocks” on HBO. I won’t be able to eavesdrop on Tony and T.O. and “Don’t Call Me Pacman” and Jerry Jones, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.

I’ll be six weeks without the nightly and morningly thrill of listening to ESPN's hopped-up anchors competing to deliver the hippest commentary. Instead, I get CNN and the BBC just reporting the scores. Imagine that. Sports news that consists of actual sports news. I could get used to it.

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College football is also going to have to start without me. That means I’ll have to wait to get a first-hand view of Weis’ efforts to put a product worthy of the Notre Dame brand on the field. Other than that, I don’t expect to miss much. Those early games are usually throwaways anyway. When the conference schedules start in earnest, I’ll be there.

Yes, I’m giving up a lot to be here in the center of the international sports universe. Some of it I actually will miss. But for all I won’t get to see back home, I’ll see even more here.

It’s five days to Opening Ceremonies and counting. I’m cranked.

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