Eight Was EnoughIn a fitting end to the baseball tournament, Cuba won the gold medal by outslugging Japanby Michael Bamberger
OVER THE past fortnight, 32 baseball games were played at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, in which there were a combined 133 home runs, innumerable pitching changes and no broken-bat singles. The purpose of all this Olympic activity was to award handsome prizes for baseball excellence and to see if any team could defeat the Cubans. The final chance for that came last night: Cuba versus Japan, baseball-crazed island versus baseball-crazed island, playing for the gold.
The finale, of course, was supposed to be an all-Western affair. All the scribes—all the U.S. writers, anyway—were typing advances for the Cuba-U.S. final weeks ago. But the U.S. was squashed by Japan on Thursday, and that meant the only thing left for the Americans was a game with Nicaragua for the bronze medal, which they secured with a 10-3 victory yesterday. As it did throughout the tournament, the U.S. died and lived by the long ball; it had four dingers against Nicaragua.
Matsunaka was out on this dive into first, but his slam in the fifth tied the game.
photograph by
The home run was so commonplace in the Olympic tournament, it was in jeopardy of losing its vaunted status. Dinger number 126, however, had true grandeur.
Through three innings last night,
Cuba led 6-0, with five of the runs scoring on long balls. Then, trailing 6-2 in the fifth, Japan first baseman Nobuhiko
Matsunaka launched a bases-loaded fastball into the steamy Dixie night and over the outfield wall. The enthusiastic response to number 126 from many of the 44,221 folks on hand suggested that either U.S. fans favored Japan over Cuba or they wanted to see a competitive game. With that one swing, all was square, 6-6. Game on.
Briefly, anyway. In the bottom of the sixth Cuba had three more homers and four more runs. In the top of the seventh there was a solo homer for Japan; in the bottom of the inning, a solo homer for Cuba. In the bottom of the eighth Cuba scored on a two-run homer by its superb third baseman, Omar Linares, who hit three home runs on the night and in nine games finished with eight homers, 16 RBIs and a .476 average. In the ninth Japan scored on a two-run homer by leftfielder Yoshitomo Tani, his second homer of the night. You getting all this?
There were 11 homers in the gold medal game, eight by the Cubans. It was like that showy fence-swinging contest before the major league All-Star Game—whoever has the most dingers wins. Cuba won 13-9. It had won the gold in Barcelona, too. According to Cuban accountants, Cuba has won 143 consecutive international tournament games. A dynasty lives, defections and all.
The most stirring moment came after the game. The medals were awarded a half-hour after the final out, and hardly a soul had left the park. As the Cubans were draped with medals and handed flowers, they snapped pictures of one another, smiled widely, their teeth glistening as they stood on a platform on the infield dirt. These men do not know freedom, not in the U.S. sense of the word, but last night they knew joy.
SI Olympic Dailies
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