THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 2, 1996 TAG: 9608020718
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C4 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Olympics '96
SOURCE: Tom Robinson
From Atlanta
LENGTH: 66 lines
The men of Cuba did their job. The boys of America could not. Like that, the gold medal baseball matchup that was to electrify the Olympics will not happen.
One and done.
Japan 11, USA 2.
These were the same Japanese players who, in three July meetings - the last one a week ago - had no prayer against the Americans. The same players who had been demolished by a composite score of 40-14. But U.S. coach Skip Bertman said that worried him, that Japan really wasn't that bad. That he was puzzled.
``They haven't played well against us this summer,'' Bertman had said the day before. ``But, in my mind, Japan is very good.''
In Bertman's mind, and in the frozen eyes of his players, Japan on Thursday was as excellent as Team USA was terrible. Japan outbashed the bashers 15 hits to six. Out-homered them five to one.
Flat out-played them in front of 47,310 people at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, including a few pockets of vocal Japanese sympathizers, who came through the gates largely presupposing this semifinal was a token exercise.
Instead, Japan embarrassed them, and so will be mighty Cuba's surprise partner in tonight's gold medal game. The Cuban machine, weakened through defections and vulnerable but formidable still, took care of business earlier Thursday with an 8-1 thumping of Nicaragua.
The Cubans are veterans who know how to win clutch international games. The Americans never had to do that before Thursday. But over an unprecedented two-year crash course during which the bulk of this team played and toured together, the Americans thought they were prepared to produce under pressure.
That they will play Nicaragua for the bronze medal today at 2 p.m. tells you they were not.
``It just goes to show what happens in a single-elimination thing like this medal round,'' second baseman Warren Morris said. ``You've got to be a little lucky and you've got to be playing well at the right time.''
Maybe the college kids had Cuba on the brain. You couldn't blame them. Beating Cuba is what the two-year training program was all about. They got asked about Cuba on every stop of their 31-game summer tour.
And they can beat Cuba. They did it in two of five exhibition games in June and July, including an 8-4 victory July 4 at Harbor Park.
That was their last meeting until Sunday, when the Americans scrambled back from a 10-2 deficit to lose 10-8 and whet the appetite for today.
Japan spoiled everything early. It pounded two home runs off Clemson's Kris Benson in the second inning for a 3-0 lead. Benson lasted only two more innings, and by the time reliever Jeff Weaver got out of the fifth Japan had a 6-0 lead.
The way Team USA can slug, it seemed as though Matt LeCroy's two-run home run in the sixth put it right back in it. Japan, though, got the runs back on another home run in the seventh.
In the U.S. dugout, Seth Greisinger sat dazed. The righthander from the University of Virginia, the sixth pick in the June draft by the Detroit Tigers, was to face Cuba for the medal.
He could handle Cuba. He had proved it in an exhibition. Now he gets a nothing game for a bronze medal that, even if he wins, will ring hollow.
``We just got a taste of our own medicine,'' Greisinger said. ``I've never seen anything like it, and I've never seen so many guys disappointed in my life. . . .
``No one's ever going to forget this game probably for the rest of their life. We had a chance to win a gold, and I think we have the caliber of players that could win gold. But now there's nothing we can do.'' by CNB