Now that Floyd Landis has lost his appeal, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport finding Monday -- as it had to, because the evidence is overwhelming -- that Landis used synthetic testosterone in the 2006 Tour de France, it would seem the Landis affair is, finally, mercifully, over.

Because while the legal proceedings may have come to an end, can any of us say with certainty that we are genuinely closer -- two years and millions of dollars in legal expenses later -- to the truth of what happened after Stage 16 of the Tour de France?

Not me.

Here, then, is my invitation to Floyd:

Call.

You've got the number. You've been to my house, sat at my kitchen table.

Let's talk about what really, truly happened. I'd like to hear about any and all stories about testosterone, in particular about any gel patches, if there were any, and where on your body they might have gone, maybe even on sensitive parts, and whether the Jack Daniels that you've acknowledged you drank in some quantity that night after bonking that day because the Tour title seemed hopeless -- did that play any role in possibly leaving a patch on too long?

The Western Conference championship T-shirts and hats were out and on and Kobe Bryant, standing at midcourt late Thursday at Staples Center, said with that big smile, "This is a dream come true."

Let me tell you what's a dream come true, at least if you appreciate greatness.

It's watching Kobe night in and night out.

It must be like it was in the 1940s, watching DiMaggio at Yankee Stadium. It's simply incomparable.

It's enough to ask, without it being rank heresy: is he the greatest ever?

Yes, yes, I know, here comes the answer, hard and fast: Michael Jordan is the greatest.

But: is Jordan truly, honestly, really all that much better? I mean, why? Don't be all sentimental. Jordan is significantly better than Kobe? Why?

"There are comparisons," said Chuck Daly, the former Pistons coach who also coached the 1992 U.S. Olympic "Dream Team," with Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and others.

Daly, emphasizing that he was not favoring one over the other, said in comparing Kobe with MJ, "It gets really tough. I mean, they are so close. He's almost a clone. I hate to use that word but-- he has won championships, he scores big numbers, he can get his shot any time and he's got those same attributes, especially that unbelievable competitiveness plus that unbelievable ability.

"A lot of guys have that ability but not that same ruthless competitiveness. They don't accept losing to anyone."

I made my major-league debut Wednesday night at Wrigley Field, where the Chicago Cubs took on the Cincinnati Reds. 

Not in the press box. 

On the mound. 

I lasted one pitch.  

Let me tell you – when you’re out there on that mound, you are all alone. You look up, and there are thousands of people in the stands, and even though it’s Wrigley, they haven’t been drinking long enough not to be paying attention.  

No pressure – but this was for sure going to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, throwing out the first pitch at a Major League Baseball game, and who would want to shank it? 

Uh, not me.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency recently launched a far-reaching initiative aimed at proving that certain elite American athletes are competing drug-free, two of the athletes in the program disclosed Wednesday at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s “media summit” in Chicago.

Bryan Clay, the 2005 world champion and 2004 Olympic Games silver medalist in the decathlon, said he is part of the program, dubbed “Project Believe,” which involves an intense schedule of regular blood and urine tests. Sprint star Allyson Felix said she’s part of it, too.

“I just feel whatever I can do to prove I’m clean I’m willing do it, no matter what time I have to wake up or drive or whatever,” Felix said.

Swim star Michael Phelps, winner of six gold medals at the 2004 Athens Games, told me he is in the program, too.

The U.S. Olympic Committee’s top leadership, appearing before hundreds of reporters in Chicago at a traditional pre-Games meeting, vowed to send a doping-free team to the Beijing Olympics and, again seeking to downplay American expectations, predicted the Chinese team would be a strong contender to win the medals count.

Senior USOC leaders also expressed support for American athletes to say what they want while in Beijing, within the confines of International Olympic Committee rules that say “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” is permitted at Olympic sites.

In addition, USOC Chairman Peter Ueberroth suggested that, in the developing race for the 2016 Summer Games, Chicago is “certainly not first.” The International Olympic Committee will pick the 2016 site in 2009; Chicago is competing against Rio de Janeiro; Madrid; Tokyo; Prague; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Doha, capital of the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar.

A high-level political campaign could take notes: all of it on message.

The USOC made no headlines. All of it had been said many times before, in many ways. Remarkable, given everything that’s going on in the run-up to the Beijing Games.

Jasmine and I are standing on the street holding the torch together, her right hand just under my left, as a little boy comes up from the left and a protestor on the right.

The boy came up from Los Angeles just to see the relay. He wants a picture, which we pose for.

 The protestor, wielding a camcorder, is yelling, "What's your view on Tibet?"

We ignore him. 

"Leave them alone!" says a woman with Alexander. She projects the manner of a seasoned mom shushing a child.

He asks the same question several more times. We don't answer. Maybe bored, maybe in search of a more provokable quarry, he goes away.

As he rides off on his bicycle, 11 motorcycle officers slide up on our right -- between us and the curb.

Four more officers on bicycles come up from behind and encircle us.

To our right, over on the grass  -- no sidewalk -- eight or 10 people start cheering for us, and the torch. "We would have been here earlier if we'd known where!"

A photographer for a Stockton newspaper takes a photo, asks for our names. A bunch of protestors rush up, one holding a Tibetan flag, yelling in a language I've never heard. 

The police, concerned, close in tighter around us. 

The incoming runners, pair 20, Lisa Hartmayer and David Drabkin, approach. We turn to meet them. 

At 2:43 pm, the torch is ours.

"We're going to make history today," a city official told us, gathered in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton.

 "There have been adjustments to the route and the order you were in yesterday is no longer relevant."

 Instead, she told us, we would be running in pairs -- two hands on the torch at one time. The route will thus be three miles instead of six.

 I am paired up with Jasmine Nachtigall, a senior at Hillsdale High School and incoming Stanford freshman.  We are to start along the Embarcadero, at Pier 19.

Mayor Newsom stood on a chair at the front of the room and said the route, now three miles instead of six, would be safe, a "stark contrast" to London and Paris.

 The route follows the waterfront Embarcadero only -- with the road lined on both sides by roadside barriers.

 Those barriers ought to make for a big difference from the scenes in Britain and France, the mayor said.

 An additional 66 officers have been put on roadside duty, the mayor said, promising an "enormous amount of security."

 If there's an incident, he said, "Be calm. Don't worry. We'll have so many people right around you."

 He also said officials believe there will be "many times more people out there celebrating than people opposed -- you will be quite welcomed."

Now we're on a bus -- we being the final 20 pairs.

 I'm in the second row, sitting next to Anita De Frantz. Jasmine is immediately behind; a big cardboard box of torches is immediately ahead of us.

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Mayor Newsom, his voice hoarse,  got on our bus nearly 75 minutes after we got on it.

Protesters and activists have infiltrated the Embarcadero near downtown.

The route has to move, he said.

Now it will move down Van Ness, one of the main north-south street in town, then west into the Marina and the Park Presidio -- more like the original course.

Police were already being pulled from some of their assigned stations, not too fast and not too many at a time -- to sustain the impression we were still going to be on the Embarcadero.

"You up for it?" he asked.

"Let's do it!" came a voice from the back of the bus.

The mayor paused, then said, "God bless you."

Our instructions are to report to a sixth-floor meeting room between 10:45 and 11 Wednesday morning.

At 10, the Olympic flame – in two lanterns – made its way out for the day, emerging from a conference room, surrounded by security guards. A police dog had sniffed the area the night before.

I saw the dog, the flame, all the commotion because, coincidentally, the conference room was just down the hall from the room I’d been given in the San Francisco Hilton.

Wrestling with the lanterns in their carrying case, the security team looked at a nearby elevator bank. “Take it down the stairs! Take it down the stairs!” one of the security officials shouted.

Peter Ueberroth, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, framed the central issue squarely Tuesday evening at a reception thrown for the torchbearers at the Asian Art Museum near San Francisco’s City Hall even as he proclaimed, “Tomorrow, you’re having a chance to watch history.”

He said, “There were some problems in London, some problems in Paris. Here’s the question: can San Francisco give the gift to the world, to teach the world, that you can have all proper dissent, every idea expressed, freedom of speech to the nth degree – and do it with dignity, and allow the Olympic torch to pass here, and do so proudly?”

I have been to Iraq.

I was in Kenya just days after the bombs went off at the U.S. Embassy there and in nearby Tanzania.

I have scampered to escape raging wildfires in Southern California.

In none of those events in my working life as a journalist was my mother so worried that she felt compelled to call beforehand to warn me to be careful.

She called as I was on my way to San Francisco to run with the Olympic torch, an assignment I had put in to do months ago. In asking, I had figured I’d gain access to the behind-the-scenes workings of the international relay. Never did I imagine the relay would explode onto front pages around the world.

“Honey,” my mother said, “I think you ought to run with a bullet-proof vest.”

“Mom …” I started to say.

She interrupted. “You don’t know what kind of nut jobs there are out there. I’m just saying.”