clips or giving speeches, finding novel ways to fire us up. He calls us together one day in Millington in the locker room during the pre–Olympic tour.
Skip previously had given every one of us a crystal baseball paperweight as a keepsake. He is standing before us holding his own crystal baseball paperweight. He begins to talk, softly. He talks about the Olympics and the opportunity we have before us, and how important it is to put the team above all else. And then suddenly the quiet of the room is shattered, Skip purposely letting his ball drop out of his hand, onto the floor, the crystal shattering on impact, startling everybody.
Skip pauses and then pulls out another crystal ball paperweight. He holds it tightly in his hands.
A team is a very special thing, Skip says. It’s something to cherish, to preserve, but it’s also fragile, like the crystal ball I just dropped, because once it’s broken or fractured—once guys don’t stay together and start playing the blame game and splitting up—you can try to glue or patch it and reassemble it, but it’s never, ever the same. Never. So be a team. Stay together. If you do that you can do great things.
I love his message.
We believe we are capable of the greatest thing of all in the Olympic baseball orbit: beating Cuba for the gold medal. We played Cuba four times the year before, in 1995, and beat them in all four games. Teams comprising U.S. college kids are not supposed to do that against the Cubans, longtime kings of amateur baseball.
Before we go out to play the Netherlands in our first game in the Olympics, Skip tells us: Remember, you are playing for Your Maker, your family, and the United States of America. He says it before every game.
Our bats are on fire as the round-robin play begins. We hit five home runs in the first inning in a 15–5 blowout of Japan, one of the medal favorites. I start against Italy and we win, 15–3. Not exactly high drama, nor the 1927 Yankees as an opponent, but I feel good about how I perform after a rocky first inning. For the whole tournament we average four homers per game and play a tight preliminary-round game with the Cubans before losing, 10–8—our only loss against six victories as we head into the semifinals against Japan.
We believe we are the team to beat. We’ve handled Cuba and we’ve beaten Japan the last nine times we’ve played them, and I mean thrashed them most of the time.
How can we not be confident?
The Japanese score three in the second inning against Benson, our starter and the number one pick in the entire big-league draft that summer. They score three more in the fifth, and go on to hit five home runs against our pitching. Meanwhile, we somehow turn a pitcher named Masanori Sugiura into the Japanese Greg Maddux. Sugiura’s regular team is the Nippon Life Insurance Company, and his policy on this day seems to be to put every pitch just where he wants it.
We fall behind 6–0, then 8–2 and 10–2. I am in the bullpen while all this is going on, and I think I am going to throw up.
I mean it. I am physically nauseous—that’s how revolted I am by what is going on, as if I have food poisoning, my system emphatically rejecting the crap that’s being stuffed down my throat.
The final score is 11–2. Japan advances to the gold-medal game against the Cubans. Team USA goes for a consolation-game bronze against Nicaragua.
It hurts more than any defeat I’ve ever been involved in. The nausea takes the whole night to lift.
The next day we play for the bronze. Skip makes sure we are ready to play, tells us that even though this isn’t the game we want to be playing, we owe it to our Maker, families, and country to honor the game and play hard. We score four in the top of the first and win going away, 10–3. Cuba beats Japan, 13–9, for the gold. When the bronze medal is placed around my neck, it’s the most bittersweet moment of my sporting career. I am one of the top amateur ballplayers in
Skip previously had given every one of us a crystal baseball paperweight as a keepsake. He is standing before us holding his own crystal baseball paperweight. He begins to talk, softly. He talks about the Olympics and the opportunity we have before us, and how important it is to put the team above all else. And then suddenly the quiet of the room is shattered, Skip purposely letting his ball drop out of his hand, onto the floor, the crystal shattering on impact, startling everybody.
Skip pauses and then pulls out another crystal ball paperweight. He holds it tightly in his hands.
A team is a very special thing, Skip says. It’s something to cherish, to preserve, but it’s also fragile, like the crystal ball I just dropped, because once it’s broken or fractured—once guys don’t stay together and start playing the blame game and splitting up—you can try to glue or patch it and reassemble it, but it’s never, ever the same. Never. So be a team. Stay together. If you do that you can do great things.
I love his message.
We believe we are capable of the greatest thing of all in the Olympic baseball orbit: beating Cuba for the gold medal. We played Cuba four times the year before, in 1995, and beat them in all four games. Teams comprising U.S. college kids are not supposed to do that against the Cubans, longtime kings of amateur baseball.
Before we go out to play the Netherlands in our first game in the Olympics, Skip tells us: Remember, you are playing for Your Maker, your family, and the United States of America. He says it before every game.
Our bats are on fire as the round-robin play begins. We hit five home runs in the first inning in a 15–5 blowout of Japan, one of the medal favorites. I start against Italy and we win, 15–3. Not exactly high drama, nor the 1927 Yankees as an opponent, but I feel good about how I perform after a rocky first inning. For the whole tournament we average four homers per game and play a tight preliminary-round game with the Cubans before losing, 10–8—our only loss against six victories as we head into the semifinals against Japan.
We believe we are the team to beat. We’ve handled Cuba and we’ve beaten Japan the last nine times we’ve played them, and I mean thrashed them most of the time.
How can we not be confident?
The Japanese score three in the second inning against Benson, our starter and the number one pick in the entire big-league draft that summer. They score three more in the fifth, and go on to hit five home runs against our pitching. Meanwhile, we somehow turn a pitcher named Masanori Sugiura into the Japanese Greg Maddux. Sugiura’s regular team is the Nippon Life Insurance Company, and his policy on this day seems to be to put every pitch just where he wants it.
We fall behind 6–0, then 8–2 and 10–2. I am in the bullpen while all this is going on, and I think I am going to throw up.
I mean it. I am physically nauseous—that’s how revolted I am by what is going on, as if I have food poisoning, my system emphatically rejecting the crap that’s being stuffed down my throat.
The final score is 11–2. Japan advances to the gold-medal game against the Cubans. Team USA goes for a consolation-game bronze against Nicaragua.
It hurts more than any defeat I’ve ever been involved in. The nausea takes the whole night to lift.
The next day we play for the bronze. Skip makes sure we are ready to play, tells us that even though this isn’t the game we want to be playing, we owe it to our Maker, families, and country to honor the game and play hard. We score four in the top of the first and win going away, 10–3. Cuba beats Japan, 13–9, for the gold. When the bronze medal is placed around my neck, it’s the most bittersweet moment of my sporting career. I am one of the top amateur ballplayers in
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