With the Little Foxes strip joint, Tattoo Tommy's, the Tasty Chic drive-thru, a military base and too many suspiciously cheap motels serving as the backdrop, the greatest day in history for women's sports started off sharp and sweet and blissfully smokin'.
Here's to a chorus of ``We Shall Overcome.'' Here's to the re-emergence of that idiotic but somehow campy phrase, ``You've come a long way, baby.''
The old marketing slogan once used by a women's tennis sponsor sprung to mind yesterday morning at around 5:22 a.m. By then, a carload of sweaty but eager journalists were barreling 127 miles south out of Atlanta - from Coke country to the home of RC Cola - to witness the making of history.
None of the 7,500 hot but happy spectators who flocked to the Olympic venue at Golden Park was disappointed. That included the bevy of sometimes jaded sports scribes - many of them American, many of the male persuasion, all of whom discovered they were suitably impressed with what they had come so far to see:
Women's softball.
And why not? Michelle Granger and the gang put on quite a show. Just after 9 a.m., with a red flag hung out over bleachers to warn people that the heat might just kill them, Granger of Team USA fired in a called strike one, earning an asterisk in the Olympic record books.
The count was 0-and-1. The 29-year wait for softball to be an Olympic medal sport was over.
It was 98 in the shade, if you could find it, and chances are you could not. It did not matter: the first Olympic softball game was underway.
And Granger, a 5-foot-11 lefty who can surely throw, showed that in softball, a bionic arm is probably the key to a gold necklace.
Granger didn't just say it with strikes, either. For her second pitch of the day, Granger threw it high and hard and over the head of the batter. The ball crashed into the backstop with a thunderous thud.
An intimidation pitch, she said.
``If I throw over their heads, they'll have to stop and wonder, won't they?'' she said.
It may not take too much more intimidation if things keep up.
The U.S. team, up against powers from Canada and Australia and five other nations, has the luxury of depth in pitching. There is Lisa Fernandez, who was 83-7 at UCLA with 11 no-hitters and a .930 winning percentage; Michele Smith, a former Oklahoma State powerhouse; and Lori Harrigan, who set her own share of records at UNLV.
But Granger got the call in the opener. And she threw so well that the U.S. women needed only six innings to beat Puerto Rico. ``I wasn't even in sync, so I'm a little disappointed,'' she said. ``I know I can pitch even better.''
The question is, does she need to?
Granger reeled off 10 strikeouts before the game was called in the bottom of the sixth with the U.S. on a scoring binge.
In theory, the game was over with that opening strike. In reality, it was curtains for the Puerto Ricans by the second inning. Granger's fastball had reduced the Puerto Rican batters to hackers. Granger twice struck out shortstop Janice Parks, who looked like a medieval sword fighter - the bat flying this way and that, up and down and all around.
The U.S. women, meanwhile, uncorked years worth of pent-up hits and RBIs.
The floodgates opened in the sixth. Shortstop and orthopedic surgeon Dot Richardson started the rally with a leadoff homer - another Olympic first.
Richardson, who will resume her hospital rounds in Los Angeles one day after the Games end, earlier had recorded the first hit and the first run scored in Olympic softball. ``This was awesome,'' Richardson, 34, said of the long-awaited softball debut, something she had dreamed about since she was a kid.
In the sixth, the U.S. women ``hit the crud out of the ball'' and scored four more runs. The umpires then waved their arms and told the Puerto Ricans ``No Mas.'' The score was 10-0 in favor of ``The Other Dream Team,'' the one that went 60-1 in pre-Olympic competition and outscored its opponents 441-3. Yes, most of the games were against Billy Beerball's All-Stars.
But in one quick game that did not even last the full seven innings, the U.S. women quieted some doubts about just how good, how fast and how skilled they are.
The victory was for everyone who had ever put on a softball mitt - especially the girls and women of the world who have tried to raise the sport to this elite, Olympic level.
Granger, the 26-year-old ((age)) Alaskan who still owns most of Cal-Berkeley's pitching records, threw nothing but smoke. It was nice that the local Protestant church let her practice in their basement. ``They didn't even seem to mind that I was Catholic and that I was putting holes in their walls,'' said the native Californian.
Granger drew oohhs and ahhs from the hot but hearty crowd, especially when the slick, gleaming white softball landed in the mitt of catcher Gillian Boxx with a stinging, percussive smack.
Men who had never seen the women's game gasped in mock horror.
``Who's got a gun on her?'' one asked.
``She's like Nolan Ryan,'' said another.
``No, she's a lefty. And she's tall,'' noted the first. ``She's Randy Johnson.''
Well, no. Not exactly. But the comparisons are appreciated. They are becoming the norm.
All across the Olympic landscape yesterday, it was women in action, women called to sporting arms.
Soccer became an Olympic sport, too, opening another arena in which women can become Olympians.
Michelle Akers, Mia Hamm and Tisha Venturini commenced their own historic chapter. The U.S. women's soccer team booted home a win over Denmark in Orlando, 3-0.
The USA women's basketball team added to the day's festivities. Teresa Edwards, Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie led the U.S. to a victory over Cuba.
Women's hoops is coming of age. Or so everyone hopes, with the start-up of two new pro leagues. How well the game plays to audiences during these Hotlanta days may help determine the future.
But whatever comes from these Olympic ventures, it was monumental enough that on one day - one grand Olympic day - there was history made, even if NBC chose not to put some of it on the air.
``Even if it wasn't in front of network television cameras,'' Richardson said, ``to throw the first pitch, to get a hit the first time at bat, to hit the first home run . . . that is awesome.''
That is.
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