BEIJING – Somewhere along the way, cynical became the cool thing in sports. Maybe it happened after 1998, after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa thrilled America by hitting all those home runs. Three years later, Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs, the new record, but by then everything in baseball had changed, steroid talk was all the rage, and nobody quite believed in what they were seeing.

Maybe it happened after all the Olympic drug scandals, after 1988 when sprinter Ben Johnson ran 100 meters in 9.79 seconds, a world record, an Olympic gold, a startling run, only to have it all taken away when he tested positive for drugs. Maybe it happened later, after Marion Jones won five Olympic medals and made a lot of money playing America’s athletic sweetheart. She so angrily and passionately denied ever using performance-enhancing. She’s in prison now serving time for perjury, and U.S. Track and Field sent a vicious letter to President Bush pleading that he not pardon her. It’s hard to stay idealistic after that.

Maybe it happened after the Salt Lake City Olympic bribery scandal. Maybe it happened after Pete Rose, Charlie Hustle, the guy who loved baseball more than anyone, got himself thrown out for gambling on the sport. Maybe it happened when football talk involved calculating how much room a team has under the salary camp. Maybe it happened when an NBA referee admitted selling information to big money gamblers.

Whenever it happened, it’s striking how much less fun sports have become the last few years. Here we are in China, a couple of days before Olympics begin, and there just isn’t much talk about, you know, the Olympics. It seems like every story you hear is about pollution or paranoia or performance enhancers or politics.

On Wednesday, the big talk was about the American cyclists who had insulted the nation by walking off the plane wearing masks. The cyclists – Michelle Friedman, Sarah Hammer, Bobby Lea and Jennie Reed – quickly released an apology statement, insisting that the masks were “in no way meant to serve as an environmental or political statement.” But, of course, it was a statement. We had been told again and again the air here in China is not fit for breathing. That’s the reason you wear a mask.

On Wednesday, the big talk was of protesters in Tiananmen Square holding up banners demanding a free Tibet and speaking out about China’s record on human rights. Everyone is watching closely to see how the Chinese government will deal with criticism; journalists are constantly testing Web sites to see which ones have been blocked (the Amnesty International site and the official Free Tibet site appear to be a couple that have been blocked). In this case, reporters reported, there were no arrests.

On Wednesday, the big talk was about American Joey Cheek, an Olympic gold medalist at the 2006 Winter Games, who said his visa to China had been suddenly revoked. Cheek started “Team Darfur,” a collection of athletes trying to raise awareness of the crisis in Darfur. He has also been loudly critical of the Chinese government for what he considers to be a muzzling of athletes.

On Wednesday, the big talk was drugs. Swimmer Dara Torres, who will become the first American woman to compete in five Olympics, held a press conference, and again answered questions about the drug suspicions that surround her, suspicions that exist because she is swimming faster than ever at age 41 and because her story in today’s world is, literally, unbelievable.

Torres has taken extra drug tests, she has given blood, she brazenly has attacked drug users (even on Wednesday, calling them people who “have no conscience”). Still, she cannot escape the doubts because that’s where we are in sports, because no is now, because skeptical is all the rage, because suspicion is the passion, because we’ve been fooled before and, as the Who sang, we won’t get fooled again.

The only trouble is that maybe we have stopped enjoying sports, which always seemed sort of the point. Maybe we have stopped appreciating the wonder of it all. Sure, there will be athletes disqualified from these Games. Yes, there is a haze here in China, and some Web sites have been blocked, and we are in a country that has a complicated and often sour history. Those things are part of the story.

But maybe that’s not the whole story. On Friday, the Olympics begin and more than 200 countries will compete in a nation that for decades was shut off to the world. Israel and Palestine will compete, Iraq and Iran, the United States and Russia, enemies and friends, a world gathering in China without war. It’s an amazing thing, really.

And here in China, there’s an enthusiasm buzzing, an excitement that is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. People rush up to foreigners to have their photos taken. They wander up to complete strangers to say, in English they have obviously been practicing, “Welcome to Beijing.” There are banners everywhere, music everywhere. People here are so proud to be hosting the Olympic Games. They want so much for it to be beautiful.

There is a small moment I think about. When I arrived at my hotel after about 24 hours of flying, there were eight or nine soldiers in full fatigues standing in front. Each had a gun strapped to his belt. That’s more or less the scene I expected when coming to China for these Olympics, a show of force, a sign of power. One of the soldiers walked over to me, and he said some words in Chinese. I shrugged nervously in the international symbol for, “I don’t understand and I didn’t do anything.”

Then he grabbed my suitcase. He began carrying it toward the hotel. I ran after him, told him that was not necessary, I could carry my own bag, I was fine. He turned to me and smiled and in a very halted way said a single word. He said: “Help.”

Now, there are cynical ways to look at that moment. I’d like to think there is still reason to believe that a stranger would see a tired traveler and want to help. I’d like to think we might still appreciate the wonder of a 41-year-old swimmer, the breathtaking speed, the pounding endurance, the brute strength of human beings without shaking our heads. I’d like to think there is still room for lower-case games in the upper-case Olympic Games.