All Greek to me

Haven't watched a lick of the Olympics yet, though I was already aware that the American team got downed by Mexico in a qualifying tournament in November and won't be participating in Athens -- the reason Roger Clemens is in an Astros uniform right now. You can't count Cuba out, but Japan ought to be the favorite for the gold medal after narrowly failing to capture a Bronze in 2000: Japanese professional baseball is on virtual hiatus this month and the Olympic team's now stocked with the best of the best with an all-pro line-up. Remember, the Japanese national team destroyed the Americans during the last MLB goodwill tour of Japan. Canada has a fair shot at something shiny, too.

Former Mets manager Davy Johnson (who's helping coach the Dutch team this year) was pretty upset about the exclusion of the U.S. team during this CNN/SI interview: "We're the leaders in pro baseball and you'd love have the U.S. players in it...It's kind of sad."

Fair enough, but them's the breaks. And the Greek team (who gained an automatic berth as the Olympic host) might as well be the American team. Organized baseball in Greece is a reasonably new development, and the country's still toying with an amateur league; in a funky twist, U.S. players claiming Greek ancestry were invited to join the team as ringers and only two members of the final squad are Greeks actually living in Greece. Of course, invite the Americans to join your squad and you've got to be prepared for a doping scandal: two members of the team have already tested positive for banned substances. And there was some danger that the Greek team wouldn't be able to make it back to Greece from a shortage of funds. And don't forget that the team's original manager died and had to be replaced.

And baseball doesn't exactly breed the fanatical devotion of, say, soccer: you're not going to see people waking up early or staying out late to go to the local sports bar and go to work all bleary-eyed and mealy-mouthed just to catch a match. You might tune in to the final medal match on August 25th and the respectable time of 1:00pm eastern, but after a series of tournament games at 3:30am and 4:30am, why bother?

Looks like our swim teams are pretty decent, though.