IT was only a couple of weeks after a few thousand found themselves curiously drawn to the drama of track and field at Kaiser High's oval. Track and field:
Catch the feverFor some, it was a first-time sensation.
In Sunday's Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore., a capacity crowd of nearly 14,000 showed how riveting an experience it can be.
Fourteen-thousand.
That's the size of crowds for NHL, NBA and -- on some days in some parks -- major league baseball games.
"I guarantee that right after the 100, they knew what the wind reading was and what it meant," sprint superstar Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago said in a Runner's World Daily (internet) story by Jim Ferstle.
Boldon said something else that really got me.
"This is what Europe is like."
Wow. What are we becoming?
Could we be on the verge of developing an appreciation for the purity of individual athletic effort in non-Olympic years?
God save us.
Before we know it, we'll have lost our blood lust.
FOOTBALL, hockey, basketball and even baseball -- count the brawls -- satisfy our need to view warring elements on the field of play.
It's much easier to identify with the agitation felt between two players battling for a rebound than it is to get into the head of a sprinter.
I'm no different. I have to confess, I started going to hockey games in Boston as a kid in hopes of seeing a one-time NHL goon named Eddie Shack put opponents through the plexiglass.
But Maurice Greene and Marion Jones, hurtling their incredibly tuned sprinter bodies from start to finish, ageless Mary Slaney making it clear that at 40, she's still able to kick butt in the 5,000, and Daniel Komen churning out a meet-record 3:50.95 mile had their own electrifying effect on the Hayward fans.
Having been at Kaiser, watching and feeling the intensity of performances by athletes like Endia Abrante as she became one of the nation's fastest female prep 400-meter runners, I finally sensed what it's all about.
I know Abrante must have been tingling if she watched TV coverage of the Prefontaine Classic, knowing she will run for Oregon on that same magical track next year in front of those same hot-wired fans.
Most impressive about the Prefontaine Classic is that 98 percent of the fans -- the wildly cheering, rhythmically clapping fans -- were from Oregon.
There was no need to import fannies to fill seats.
MEET director Tom Jordan did a survey that found that 80 percent were there to see individual athletes.
They knew who they were from TV, magazine and newspaper accounts.
And maybe Nike commercials featuring the heavenly body of 1,500-meter star Suzy Hamilton helped, too. Hamilton -- a regular at the Waikiki Mile -- showed she has a lot more than beauty going for her when she turned it on in the last 200 meters to beat national outdoor champion Regina Jacobs.
The point is that in-state people were relating to track and field more than 20 years after the death of Oregon's charismatic James Dean of track, Steve Prefontaine.
That means this could happen almost anywhere, if the right elements are brought together. It could even happen on the University of Hawaii's track oval -- with necessary upgrades -- if someone were enterprising enough to bring a major meet here some day.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.