USA Olympic Baseball Team Begins Gold Medal Quest

OLYMPICS - Team USA kicked off their gold medal quest on Tuesday at Santa Clara University’s baseball stadium with their first practice together under manager Davey Johnson. The Americans travelled to North Carolina the following day to play four exhibition games against Canada before heading to Beijing on August 5.

Blaring music and a few hundred fans welcomed the team at Stephen Schott Stadium which was constructed in 2005. One of the highlights of the workout was the power display of top prospects Nate Schierholtz and Matt LaPorta, whose mammoth home runs during batting practice electrified the cheering crowd.

Schierholtz, who plays at the Triple-A level for the San Francisco Giants, crushed one pitch over the right field fence that reached a condo building. LaPorta, who came to Cleveland in the highly-publicized CC Sabathia trade to the Milwaukee Brewers, also connected for a few tape-measure long balls.

One player who has been busy logging frequent fly miles recently is veteran pitcher Brandon Knight, who substituted for Pedro Martinez on the mound Saturday night for the New York Mets.

The 32-year-old made the emergency start for Martinez who went home to the Dominican Republic for his father’s funeral. He was designated for assignment the next day which allowed the 32-year-old hurler to keep his spot on Team USA.

The players, who enjoyed a few days off since leaving their minor league teams, were anxious to begin preparing for the Olympics while Johnson spent the majority of the workout putting positions to faces. Although the 65-year-old former big league skipper already has a pitching rotation and lineup in mind, he will let the performance of each player determine who will see the most action.

Johnson believes that the Japanese are the favorites but that every team will be gunning to shoot down the Americans. And, although the American manager expects it to be no cake walk in China, he liked his first impression of Team USA.

Besides their first workout, the players also underwent their Olympic registration and orientation. The squad was treated to videos from previous Olympic tournaments which included 2000 Sydney Games hero Ben Sheets and the rest of the American team carrying the flag around the stadium after capturing the gold medals.

Team USA will open Olympic competition on August 13 against Korea.

Source: Cleveland.com