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All of his spectacular success has not been lost on Ueberroth. There is a lot of the prince in him. Now he is introduced routinely to audiences as a man who brought honor to America. Three weeks ago President Reagan invited him to the White House and asked him to serve on a committee to energize the private sector in causes all the way from world hunger to urban blight. Lee Iacocca, a man Ueberroth much admires, picked him to share responsibility for the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. The hero of the Olympics receives hundreds of letters urging him to run for President. Some of his associates have pushed him to get into national politics, arguing that he is apolitical and therefore broadly acceptable, a tough-minded leader who is properly frugal. Although he was disillusioned at the indifferent way Reagan handled the Soviet boycott, he voted twice for his fellow Californian.
But Ueberroth remains skeptical about any change in his career direction. Besides, he has already found a new crusade. Baseball, the national pastime, he discovered, is in far more distress than anyone really knows. Of the 26 franchises, 22 are losing money. The use of drugs is an accelerating problem. All of this seems to him a worthy chal- lenge. Now Ueberroth talks excitedly about baseball cards that will carry personal messages from the players about drugs. But the incredible fever of the Olympics is never very far from his mind. An Olympic torch hangs on the office wall of baseball's new commissioner. One recent afternoon, waiting for a team owner to arrive, Ueberroth was asked to take a minute to look at a short film of the Olympic torch relay. He had never seen pictures of the event. He stood in a small office waiting for the film to be shown on a TV screen.
Suddenly there they were, those familiar thrilling images, families holding up small children, waiting eagerly for a runner to come into view. There was a grandmother running proudly, a red-haired boy barely able to carry the two- pound torch, a smiling young woman limping along with an artificial limb. / Ueberroth stood silent, staring. A runner whose eyes seemed to be gazing at the sky appeared. Ueberroth recognized him instantly. "He's the one who is blind," he said softly.
When the film ended, Ueberroth looked pleased. "I hoped the run would unify the country," he said. He spoke of how much pride the Olympics had rekindled. "People weren't afraid to stand up and cheer for the country," he said, "and the rest of the world saw how caring America can be." And there was something more. In the U.S., he observed, "there's a spirit of can-do, can-work, can-accomplish--you can do things without being on the Government dole. People want to know that something can work, that somebody can step up and turn a situation around."
Ueberroth has a way of trying to turn whatever he touches into a cause. To be involved in difficult problems with difficult goals lifts him up. He is a promoter with a global mission, a throwback to the kind of American entrepreneurial zealot who believes unblushingly that his product is a force for good in the world. And maybe, if he just gets everyone pulling together and persuades them that the impossible can be done, then maybe everything will be under perfect control.