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Hello Dolly U.S.-Cuba face off in gold-medal game
SYDNEY, Australia -- U.S. Olympic baseball team manager Tommy Lasorda removed a white teddy bear festooned in full red, white and blue Uncle Sam regalia from a plastic bag and pushed a button. Now, back when he was manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Lasorda pushed a lot of buttons but never one that activated a talking toy in front of the world's press. The new mascot for the U.S. baseball team said "America, the home of the free and the brave" in a tinny voice before seguing into several bars of Stars and Stripes Forever and ending with a rousing "U.S.A. No. 1!" If this is not quite protocol for Olympic post-game press conferences, understand the U.S. had just concluded something other than a standard-issue game. In a contest interrupted for two hours in the eighth inning by a lightning storm -- even though it seemed like the game was being played under a full moon the entire night -- the Americans earned the right to play Cuba for the gold medal Wednesday when a man who initially was sent up to bunt hit a home run that beat South Korea, 3-2. Doug Mientkiewicz hit the game-winning homer against the shell-shocked Koreans, just as he had a week earlier when he broke up a 0-0 game against South Korea in the preliminaries with a grand slam. The name Mientkiewicz is familiar mostly todisappointed Rotisserie League players. Mientkiewicz was the Minnesota Twins' regular first baseman for much of 1999, hitting just .229 and driving in 32 runs in 327 at-bats. There were problems. The Twins didn't think he was much of a listener. They would work on something in batting practice with Mientkiewicz but as soon as the game started, he'd revert to his old, comfortable ways. The problem really wasn't his recalcitrance, it was that he was a first baseman without much power -- although you might get an argument about that today in Seoul. Mientkiewicz, 26, has hit as many homers in the past week against Korea as he did in six months against the American League. This is the healing power of the Olympics. The Games offer ablution to those who can pick their pitch and their moment. Or maybe it was the rain that added to the surreal aura and washed away all sins -- not to mention part of the warning track. In either case, with the game having crept into Wednesday morning in Australia, with one on and no out in the bottom of the ninth, Mientkiewicz was soaked to the skin. Lasorda asked Mientkiewicz to bunt. Mientkiewicz said that was fine with him. "I would have done anything," he said, "to get out of these wet clothes." When pinch runner Gookie Dawkins got picked off first base, however, it became clear that Mientkiewicz would have to do a little bit more. Mientkiewicz hit a Park Seok-Jin sinker to right field, then sneezed on it, blew on it, willed it to carry into the sopping night. He had never hit a so-called walk-off home run. Not in the minors. Not anywhere. He rounded the bases and found a greeting party at home plate so large it deserved its own zip code, the Americans pounding Mientkiewicz on the back like the World Series celebrations you used to watch in black and white. The Cubans presumably were sleeping by then, resting up for U.S. starter Ben Sheets and a gold-medal game Wednesday that simply had to happen. The Americans, humiliated 6-1 in the round robin by Cuba, wanted it badly. "In order to be the best, you have to beat the best," said Mientkiewicz. "We wanted Cuba to [beat Japan] today. Honest to God." The Americans are the clear underdogs against the nation that has won every Olympic baseball gold medal. But the jangling nerves that undermined them in their first game against Cuba seemed to dissipate with the flight of Mientkiewicz's home run. In the U.S. dugout, there are now 24 players who think they can win a gold medal. Twenty-four players and one wacky doll.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Michael Farber is in Sydney covering the Games for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back daily to read Farber's behind-the-scene reports from Down Under.
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