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Tommy Lasorda is hyperventilating. Again. When it comes to getting all worked up, Lasorda is the undisputed champion of baseball. If they gave out gold medals for working yourself into a lather, Lasorda would be standing a foot above everybody else in the game.

The former Dodgers manager is on the phone from Ogden, Utah, there to watch a minor-league game, and he's talking about something near and dear to his red, white and Dodgers blue heart. Four years ago, Lasorda took a bunch of no-names to Sydney for the 2000 Olympics -- the players, except for longtime major-league catcher Pat Borders, were all-out nobodies to Lasorda -- and won the gold medal.

It was, Lasorda said then and many times since, the highlight of his baseball life.

"It was bigger than the World Series. It was bigger than my 50-plus years with the Dodgers. It was bigger than Major League Baseball," he says now, gaining steam. "People thought I was wacky for talking like that. But you win a gold medal, all of America is happy."

So here we are now, on Aug. 25, 2004, and another gold medal baseball game in another Olympics -- this time in Athens, Greece -- is being played. Just not by Americans.

You missed that, did you? Didn't realize the Americans weren't in it? Forgot, maybe, that they weren't even in Greece? That silly setback in November, when Mexico beat the U.S. 2-1 and canceled the Americans' ticket to Athens, slip your mind?

Well, welcome back. America's national pastime is in the Olympics, sure. But the Americans aren't.

"Do you know how many countries are represented in the Olympics, and how many sports, and how many athletes?" Lasorda asked, though I couldn't quite tell whether it was a rhetorical question or not. "A lot. A lot. But no Americans in baseball? Why? Why? It's sad. Very sad."

There's a good reason, of course, that no American baseball players are in Athens, and Lasorda knows it. Basically, it comes down to this: The rules that govern which nations qualify for the Games are as outdated as the Olympia shot put venue. And not nearly as cool.

Eight teams make the Olympic tournament, two from each of three regions (America, Asia and Europe) and one from another (Africa/Oceania). The final spot goes to the host nation; in this case, Greece.

The problem is that there are more Olympic-worthy teams in America and Asia than there are ... well, just about anywhere. So while the Americans were getting upset by Mexico in their qualifier in Panama, sending Canada and Cuba to Athens to represent "America," both the Netherlands and Italy were waltzing into the Olympics from that hotbed of baseball, Europe.

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It's great for globalization and all that -- heck, nobody wants an eight-team tournament in the Olympics with six teams from the Western hemisphere -- but the qualifying setup is a little like putting the Cardinals, Dodgers, Braves, A's, Red Sox, Yankees and Angels all in one division. With no wild card.

"It is a little lopsided," agreed pitcher Jeff Francis, who makes his major league debut Wednesday with the Rockies.

If things had gone a little differently for Francis, he might be pitching Wednesday in the gold medal game for Canada. But the Rockies had other plans for the young lefty from Vancouver, B.C., and the Canadians blew a lead Tuesday against Cuba anyway. Francis will pitch against the Braves on Wednesday at Turner Field while Cuba meets Australia (Go Oceania!) for the gold.

Without the U.S. team in Athens, baseball has been as hard to find on American Olympic telecasts as a gymnastics judge with a clue. It's true that, even during the 2000 Games, baseball wasn't exactly must-see TV. But that didn't make it any less compelling.

Four years ago, Doug Mientkiewicz, a Gold Glover now with the Red Sox, had two game-winning homers in the tournament. The Astros' starting shortstop, Adam Everett, was on that team, as was one of the Astros' better pitchers, Roy Oswalt. C.C. Sabathia, the Indians' ace, was in Sydney. So was Sean Burroughs, the Padres' third baseman. They were all virtual unknowns then, which made the go for gold even more satisfying. Cuba came into the final hitting .344, but Ben Sheets, now the Brewers' ace, three-hit the Cubans to win the gold medal, 4-0.

Afterward, Lasorda draped an American flag over his shoulder, put the gold around the necks of his guys and cried.

"They made a movie about the hockey team," Lasorda said, referring to Miracle, the story of the gold medal-winning American team in the 1980 Olympics, "but, I'm telling you, for us to beat the Cubans was bigger than for them to beat the Russians. Nobody in all of the world believed we could have beaten the Cubans."

I told Lasorda I'd give Disney a call.

"You tell Disney that if they make a film for that, it'll come out much better than Miracle," he said. "Call it 'The Unbelievable Achievement.' Yeah. 'The Unbelievable Achievement.'"

It's not exactly snappy. It needs a little ... something. But it could work. It has possibilities.

And, for American baseball fans, it'd play a lot better than the story of this Olympics.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.