As night bar manager at Barney's Beanery in Pasadena, Eric Gonzalez has an awesome responsibility: He's master controller of nearly 100 televisions.
So when the Summer Games began Aug. 8, he was nervous. Should he bump Major League Baseball and other mainstream events off the big screens? Would his hard-core sports patrons complain that synchronized diving, team handball, BMX cycling, trampoline and other Olympic fare were for bars that serve arugula salads?
"If customers don't like what you put up there, they will let you know," Gonzalez said in the control booth, where patrons aren't allowed. "You hear the boos."
Turns out he needn't have worried. His customers are lapping up as much Olympic action as he can put on. Sometimes the more obscure, the better.
"They even wanted to see the skeet shooting or clay shooting, whatever they call it," he said.
With the Beijing Games in full swing and NBC showing a record 3,600 hours of it on broadcast and cable, many sports unfamiliar to Americans -- such as single-handed dinghy racing, air-rifle shooting and women's weightlifting -- are getting their moments in the sun. Few if any athletes in these events will see their faces on a Wheaties box, but these oddly compelling sports are winning over fans typically devoted to the holy trinity of baseball, basketball and football.
"Everyone wants to see a woman lift 250 pounds over her head," explained Ken Moody, 47, a self-described football guru sitting at the bar. He stayed home one night last week to watch the live online stream of women's weightlifting.
Veteran shock jock and sports fan Don Imus summed up the phenomenon on his radio show when he mentioned coming across coverage of team handball. "I don't know what it was," Imus said, "but I saw it, and I watched it. And I rooted for one of the teams."
But if you think some of this year's sports are strange, consider what Olympic fans were watching in 1900. That year in Paris, Charles de Vendeville of France took gold in underwater swimming, in which competitors got a point for every second they stayed underwater and 2 points for every meter swum.
Also on the schedule in Paris: obstacle swimming, in which competitors had to climb over boats. Frederick Lane of Australia was the champ.
In 1904 in St. Louis, there was the "plunge for distance." Competitors dived into a lake and had to stay motionless for 60 seconds or until their heads broke the surface -- whichever came first. Americans swept the medals, led by William Dickey, who got down more than 62 feet.
