Thursday, September 28, 2000

Neill, Sheets shine as Lasorda’s team topples Cuba, 4-0

By Bill Koch
Scripps Howard News Service

Associated Press

United States pitcher Ben Sheets celebrates after retiring the final Cuban batter Wednesday. The U.S. captured the baseball gold medal with a 4-0 victory.

SYDNEY, Australia - The home run set the stage. It not only gave the U.S. a 1-0 lead over Cuba, but it made a statement to the reigning dynasty of international baseball.
   Forget about that 6-1 beating you gave us last week. Forget about the 25-3 record all-time record you own against the U.S. This is a different team. We are professionals, minor league professionals, sure, but still pros and we will no longer be intimidated like the college kids were.
   If the Cubans had expected a cakewalk on the way to their third straight Olympic gold medal, they knew better after Mike Neill launched a home run to left field with two out in the top of the first inning.
   The U.S. had won three previous games here with dramatic, late-inning homers. This time it used a first-inning shot that seemed to stun the Cubans.
   They were even more stunned when they went to bat and found right-hander Ben Sheets on top of his game.
   Before they knew what happened, Sheets had thrown a three-hit shutout and the U.S. had beaten Cuba, 4-0 at Olympic Park on Wednesday to claim its first gold medal since baseball became an Olympic sport in 1992.
   As the Cubans walked slowly off the field, the U.S. players wrapped each other in the American flag and circled the field in a victory lap, waving to the crowd, many of whom were chanting, "USA-USA."
   "It felt like I was walking on air," said U.S. shortstop Adam Everett. "Cuba's supposed to be the best baseball team in the world, but we just proved that we are when it counts."
   Cuban right-hander Pedro Luis Lazo started the game by striking out the first two U.S. hitters with a blazing fastball, suggesting that the U.S. might be in for another offensive struggle.
   Then Neill walked to the plate and launched his home run.
   "It gave us a little momentum," Neill said. "It let them know we were here to play and it let Ben pitch relaxed. Pitching from behind is difficult."
   Sheets, a 22-year-old member of the Milwaukee Brewers organization, had the formidable Cuban hitters beating the ball into the ground all night. He induced 16 ground ball outs, struck out five and didn't walk a batter. Cuba never advanced a runner as far as third base.
   Even the three Cuban hits lacked authority. Two were pop-ups that fell out of the reach of the U.S. fielders. One was a ground ball that slipped through the right side.
   "He doesn't scare," said U.S. manager Tommy Lasorda, who dedicated these Olympics to the Cuban refugees in Miami. "He's just a baby as far as baseball is concerned and look what he went out and did in front of the whole world."
   The U.S. scored three more runs in the fifth on an RBI double by catcher Pat Borders and a two-run single by Ernie Young. Those were the same two players who were involved in incidents that almost escalated the first Cuba-U.S. game into a brawl.
   Young was hit in the middle of the back by a Jose Ibar pitch. Borders was spiked on a play at the plate by Cuba's Yobal Duenas and screamed an obscenity at him as he headed for the dugout.
   But the U.S. was determined not to get caught up in that sort of thing in the rematch. Its game plan was to exact revenge, but to do it by securing the gold medal and claiming the mantle of baseball supremacy that Cuba has worn for so long.
   "That game showed us what we had to do beat them," Everett said. "They come out and try to intimidate you. That's not our game. We don't play that way. We're just going to come out and beat you."
   Sheets struck out the first two batters he faced in the ninth, then Yassar Gomez lashed a line drive to left. It was the hardest hit ball of the night for the befuddled Cubans, but it was picked off by Neill, who made a sliding catch and snatched the ball cleanly just above the grass.
   The same player who had started the game with a jolt of a home run had ended it with an emphatic catch.
   The celebration began immediately. The U.S. players mobbed each other at the mound, then made their way to Neill just beyond third base. Lasorda, who managed the Los Angeles Dodgers in five World Series, wiped a tear from his eye as he stood off to the side with a flag draped over his shoulder.
   "This is bigger than the World Series," Lasorda said. "When the Dodgers won the a world championship, Dodgers fans were happy. Cincinnati fans weren't. San Francisco fans weren't. But today, with this team, all of America is happy."
  
  

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