Olympic Sports

Pitcher Perfect
Unheralded reliever Dan Wheeler saved the U.S.'s Olympic hopes

The Breeze blowing off Lake Manitoba on Sunday night was actually the U.S. baseball team exhaling. In the semifinals of the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg, the U.S. needed 10 innings and a clutch relief performance to beat Mexico 2-1 and qualify for the 2000 Olympics. With the top two teams in Winnipeg assured of spots in Sydney, Monday's final, a 5-1 loss to two-time defending Olympic champion Cuba, was almost an afterthought. "Can you imagine taking USA baseball out of the Olympics?" asked Bob Watson, former Yankees general manager and vice chairman of the team's selection committee after Sunday's game. "Unthinkable."

Might as well take the Cubans out of boxing and the French out of fries. It could have happened, though, if not for righty Dan Wheeler's four perfect innings on Sunday. In retiring Mexico's final 12 hitters—five of whom he fanned—Wheeler threw 34 of 46 pitches for strikes. Before Mike Neill's RBI single in the top of the 10th, Wheeler told pitching coach Marcel Lachemann, "I feel awesome. I'll just go until we score."

Wheeler was an unlikely hero. In 1996 the Devil Rays drafted him out of Central Arizona (junior) College with their 34th-round pick and told him he would be a DFE, an abbreviation for draft, follow and evaluate. Major league teams can hold the rights to a DFE—or any other player, for that matter—without signing him for up to a week before the following year's draft, as long as he doesn't attend a four-year college. Few DFEs ever become topflight major leaguers, but Wheeler was not discouraged when he was told he was a long shot After going 19-6 as a starter at Central Arizona in 1996 and '97, he signed with Tampa Bay and worked his way up to Triple A Durham, where he is 5-3 with a 4.13 ERA.

Devil Rays general manager Chuck LaMar has come to like Wheeler's attitude and pitching style so much that in a series of conference calls in the spring he persuaded the other 18 members of the Pan Am team's steering and search committees to include him on the U.S. roster. Wheeler, who had been a starter since his junior college days, worked 5? scoreless relief innings in a preliminary-round game against Cuba before allowing a two-run homer to Isacc Martinez. Wheeler was pulled before a five-run ninth lifted the U.S. to a 10-5 victory, but his performance opened the eyes of many scouts. "Nobody thought he'd do what he did against Cuba—17 of 19 sliders for strikes," says Mike Hamilton of the Major League Baseball Scouting Service. "He's better than people think." Wheeler's control is so good mat he's always around the plate. "When Dennis Eckersley pitched, you knew you'd get sliders for strikes, too," Hamilton says. "Doesn't mean you could hit them."

It's a stretch to suggest that Wheeler might turn into an Eckersley, but last week in Winnipeg anything seemed possible. Canada, which has qualified for the Olympics only once, defeated Cuba and the U.S. in the preliminary round before losing to Cuba 3-2 in the semifinals. Cuba, which had won 152 straight tournament games from 1987 to '97, ended up with two defeats.

Even as his prospects of becoming a major leaguer brightened, Wheeler was talking as if he would like to pitch for the U.S. team in Sydney no matter what "I've dreamed about getting the call to the majors," Wheeler said after Sunday's game. "But this is the biggest rush I've had in my life." Wheeler stepped back to let two cameramen get better shots of him. Then he shook his head and laughed at the notion that a DFE had become a VIP.

Legally Blind Runner
Sight for Sore Eyes

After her surprising victory in the 1,500 meters at the Pan Am Games last week, Marla Runyan of the U.S. skipped into the stands at Winnipeg's Manitoba Stadium, listened for the familiar voice saluting her, and tried to follow it amidst the other congratulatory shouts. When Runyan reached the source of that voice, she waited for it to move or speak again. Was it a man? A woman? Runyan couldn't tell. Only when Rahn Sheffield, her former coach at San Diego State, shouted a delirious, "Marla!" did the legally blind Runyan know it was safe to start hugging.

Runyan was born with macular degeneration of the retina, a condition that left her with only limited ability to see details such as faces and numbers. "What's in front of me disappears into a hole," she says. When Runyan races, she anticipates who her stiffest competitors will be—in Winnipeg she figured they would be Cindy O'Krane and Leah Pells of Canada—and memorizes their uniform colors and other distinguishing features, such as hairstyles. "What made this one easier," Runyan said of the Pan Am race, "was that Cindy had a ponytail and Leah didn't."