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While we're on the subject of sports and politics and how the two seem to intermingle often, one of the bones of contention for years to come will be the relative success of the Olympics which have just concluded.

The Soviets will undoubtedly point to the 35 world records set, the numerous medals they piled up, and the several confrontations which gripped even dispassionate observers--like the duel between Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett. Then again, events such as equestrian did not even resemble competitions of Olympian stature.

It is likely that with or without the boycott, the Soviets and their satellites would have put on an overwhleming display of athletic prowess since they prepared their athletes with all the care taken before military adventures. Moreover, with or without the boycott, Soviet citizens would have picked up conflicting signals on relations between the Motherland and the West.

But the boycott did reduce Lord Killanin and the Soviet Olympic Committee to pathetic figures, wailing about the future of the Olympics, decrying America's moral choice, denying simultaneously that the noticeable absence tarnished the games. Whether or not you support the boycott, and whether or not Soviet medal figures and the number of records established had been the same without the boycott, the Games were undermined substantially. But did we intend to undermine the games or the Soviet Union? The second is contingent on the first, and both were neatly, if insignificantly, accomplished.

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Baseball winds down to the last third of the season, and fans all over Boston are bemoaning the Sox' sagging prospects. But before we get wrapped up in self-indulgence, let's pray for Houston fireballer J. Rodney Richard. Anyone who ever saw Richard hurl his whistling fastball into the dead of a summer night (actually, it was often difficult to see) knows that he provided one of the great thrills in sports anywhere, only to be obscured nationally by the small amount of attention the Astros received. It is a sobering throught that an athlete so talented can be stricken by a stroke at such an early age, and the fact that his earned run average for the season will wind up under 2.00 provides little consolation for baseball purists and casual fans.