ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, July 22, 1996 TAG: 9607220105
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: our eyes in atlanta
DATELINE: COLUMBUS, GA.
Softball dawned on the Olympics Sunday, and although it was very early for most, it was very late for others.
"The alarm went off at 5:30 [a.m.]," said late-rising lefthander Michele Granger of the United States, who threw the first softball pitch - a rising fastball - in a century of Olympics at 9. "It was snooze [button], snooze, then I got up."
The reporters who bused the 105 miles southwest from Atlanta to the venerable but renovated Golden Park venue had to catch a bus at 4:55. Dot Richardson, however, didn't need a wake-up call.
"I started dreaming about the Olympics when I was 6," said the U.S. shortstop, now an orthopedic surgeon of 34 who practices more than one profession. "It seems like it's taken forever."
The first home run trot in Olympic history didn't, however. Richardson started a five-run sixth inning with a homer to center, and the favored United States stopped the game and Puerto Rico, 10-0.
As she circled first base and saw the Mizuno ball fly over the 200-foot fence, Richardson pulled a Kirk Gibson, raising her arm into a fist pump.
It was an exclamation point on a historical day.
International softball is played by 101 nations, and it has taken since 1965 to get the sport into the Olympics. In that year, only world champion Australia, New Zealand, Japan, New Guinea and the United States competed on the world level.
Eleven years later, when Richardson was only 15, she was drafted by the Connecticut Falcons in the first U.S. women's pro league. She didn't sign.
"I wanted to play in the Olympics, and I knew that by turning pro then, I couldn't," said the Orlando, Fla., resident. "Finally, we're living it. I couldn't wait to get here. I woke up twice during the night."
The United States is and should be a softball powerhouse. The game was developed in this country in 1887, four years before basketball was first played. The International Softball Federation says 41.2 million people play organized softball worldwide.
Of those, 33 million are in the United States, where the Amateur Softball Association in Oklahoma City administers the national team. Japan is a distant second, at 3.92 million.
Besides the United States, Japan and Puerto Rico, the first Olympic tournament round-robin includes China, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Australia and The Netherlands.
Still, the fast-pitch version of the sport is underdeveloped in this country, although the boom in the female side of the game grows louder annually.
The Olympics will only help that, particularly in this region, where Georgia schools have been slow to leave slow-pitch and Florida high schools just began fast-pitch last year.
Golden Park had an Olympic sellout crowd of 8,500 for the opener in a renovated facility where Babe Ruth, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Hank Aaron, Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella and Cal Ripken Jr. once played.
With the Olympics, it has more history, not to mention some artsy brick arches and a warm sculpture of five little girls playing softball.
Tthe Columbus Redstixx, Cleveland's Class A farm team in the South Atlantic League, have been banished to a college park all season because of an Olympic sport that was long overdue.
The U.S. women certainly don't mind being outside the Olympic ring and traffic crush in this friendly city of 186,000. They don't even seem to mind that NBC's telecast coverage plans to all but ignore them.
"I thought it was going to happen in the late '80s," Richardson said of her Olympic dream that has been realized by a U.S. national team that's 111-1 in international play the last 10 years. "Then four years ago at Barcelona, we thought we were in as a demonstration sport.
"Then they decided there wouldn't be any more demonstration sports. Talk about a letdown. In high school, I played volleyball, basketball, soccer, softball and tennis. For years, people told me I had stuck with the wrong sport.
"It finally hit me today when they announced my name and I was the first one to run out to the pitching circle. Then, it hit me again when Grange threw the first pitch. We're in the Olympics. When I got up to bat [she led off], I had to take a deep breath." Then, she ripped a single up the middle. After 17 years on the national team, she finally had an Olympic hit.
"I can't tell you how big this day is," she said.
It was only the biggest in the sport's hsitory.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 linesby CNB