Greece Run Cuba Close in Baseball

The mighty Cuban team last night defeated a Canadian rivet salesman, a mortgage broker, a former New York Yankee and a bunch of guys who raised their hand when a scout walked into baseball dressing rooms from Nebraska to Florida and asked: "Anyone in here Greek?" But it was a close-run thing.

Three runs in the top of the ninth inning by the home team briefly threatened to send the Cubans - a perennial power at the Olympic level - off to the same doghouse occupied by the US basketball team, but in the end they escaped with a 5-4 win over a makeshift team that owes its presence here to the kind of genealogical research once the preserve of the former Ireland football manager Jack Charlton.

"Before the game I told my players they were going to have to do something that they were not capable of doing, and they almost did it. I am so proud right now," said the part-time coach Dusty Rhodes, who went close to becoming the first college coach from Florida to attain the status of Greek national hero.

Yet for a while he looked like a chump when, to the surprise of no one, the favourites for the gold went straight into the lead with a home run in the second inning. Thereafter the Cubans fielded well, batted adequately with a couple of home runs and, in Luis Vera, possessed a starting pitcher who looked good enough to play in the North American big leagues.

Then, to the surprise of everyone, so did the Greeks - once they finally roused themselves in the closing inning.

Up to that point they had looked outclassed - not that this seemed to bother the enthusiastic home crowd, which found plenty to cheer about. Their heroes' names for one thing - Demetral, Spanos, Markakis, Theodorakos, Koutsantonakis and so on, all the way down the 23-man roster (Cory Harris and Sean Spencer notwithstanding). Then there was the fact that a game of this standard featuring a Greek team was actually being played at all in a country that until recently only had two baseball diamonds, both of them on US bases.

For this Greece can thank the IOC, which says the host nation may field a team in every event, and the Hellenic Amateur Baseball Federation, founded in 1999 by Peter Angelos, the Greek-American owner of a major league team, the Baltimore Orioles. His purpose was to ensure not just that last night's game took place but that Greece would field enough decent players to avoid on-field embarrassment.

To that end a website was set up, urging "high school, college and professional players with Greek ancestry" to get in touch. Meanwhile, the former coach Rob Derksen spent four years touring the country in search of talent.

Derksen, who died suddenly this summer, turned up the likes of Laurence Heisler, who briefly pitched in the minor leagues - baseball's equivalent to the Nationwide Conference - before heading into a more glamorous career as a mortgage salesman.

At the other end of the baseball scale came Clay Bellinger, a 35-year-old former New York Yankee who admitted - presumably as a joke - that his only connection with Greece was that his wife "went back-packing there once".

Bellinger, who actually won two World Series rings as a Yankee, came up with Greece's first run against the Cubans, dashing in from third base on an error by the catcher, Ariel Pestano, at the top of the fourth inning. That cut the Cuban lead to 2-1 and whipped the home fans into something like a frenzy. In a week marked by empty arenas and national anthems bouncing off empty walls, it was heartening to see such a bubbling crowd - even if, in their lack of baseball knowledge, they were occasionally enthusiastic about the wrong things.

At Yankee Stadium, balls hit into the crowd are not politely thrown back. "Please note, fans are allowed to keep any ball they catch," the announcer explained. Still, even the blissfully ignorant know a fighting comeback when they see one, and for that they can be forgiven for applauding their departing, defeated team as if they had won a famous victory.