THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 5, 1996 TAG: 9607050251
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: TOM ROBINSON
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 67 lines
What matters is one baseball game. One pulsating Aug. 2 afternoon at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium where, provided they don't blow the script, Cuba and the United States will play one game for the Olympic gold medal.
If you multiply the crowd of 10,105 by five, push the humidity level to tropic and the intensity to a raw screech, Thursday night at Harbor Park was a sample of what might be.
So was the result. Believe it. The USA's college kids clubbed mighty Cuba's finest men 8-4 in the finale of a five-game series that was spent tinkering with lineups, limits, weaknesses and psyches.
The record says Cuba prevailed three games to two. And regardless of USA manager Skip Bertman's pregame insistence that the series says nothing about anything, two wins - and a loss that the USA let slide late - had to do heavy work on the brains of Bertman's boys.
This isn't the Dream Team and Angola, the Swiss bobsledders vs. the Jamaicans or some other no-chance sideshow. This is swaggering, world champion Cuba and a USA team, primed for the Olympics like never before, that isn't far behind.
If the Americans only thought they knew that before the series began June 29, they are sure of it now. The Cubans do, too. In the one game that counts, darn right the USA, a slugging group that's a bit pitching-shy, can outplay Cuba for the gold it last won in 1988, when baseball was a demonstration sport.
``I think they've realized they're going to have to play a heck of a ballgame to beat us,'' said Seth Greisinger, the University of Virginia star and the USA's probable No. 1 starting pitcher. ``I think we've put some doubts in their minds. And we've definitely put a lot of confidence in our minds, so we think we'll be able to do it when it comes time to beat them.''
The USA staggered to a fourth-place finish in '92 when Cuba captured the gold in Barcelona. Two years later, USA Baseball decided that, short of using professionals, player and staff continuity was the ticket to international supremacy.
It identified the country's best young talent, named Louisiana State's Bertman as manager, indoctrinated everybody into the program and got results. Last summer, Team USA, with most of the players who are on the current squad, went 36-6 and beat Cuba four consecutive times, though that Cuban team wasn't near the peak efficiency of this one.
Playing on Thursday for the first time with the 20 players they'll take to Atlanta, the Americans improved to 20-3 - knowing that beating Cuba now means more than it did last year.
``This is a lot similar (USA) team to '88 that went to Seoul,'' Cuban manager Jorge Fuentes said. ``I think this is one of their better clubs of all-time. I think their club is better prepared this year.''
In Atlanta, 55,000 flag-wavers will thirst for proof. With the Soviet menace dead, one of the best opportunities for a good old-fashioned jingoistic scrap between democracy and Communism is baseball.
And though Bertman just wants to play baseball, he knows politics in an Olympic year are inescapable, particularly when the Games are stateside.
``The kids don't even know about the Cuban missile crisis or embargoes,'' Bertman said. ``They really don't even know much about socialism. They don't get that much in school anymore now that the Soviet government collapsed. But I think other people, the people who watch, do.
``As we go through this tour, while we haven't been booed, people are very impatient when we don't do well. They don't really know the (players') names, it's just the USA and it's good to be a winner. I think what those people are missing is that just being a citizen is a winner. It's the greatest country in the world, and nothing's going to change that by the outcome of a baseball game.''
Yeah. But come Aug. 2, what a great baseball game it could be. by CNB