Summer Olympics 2000 Games turning into nightmare for U.S.

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Thursday, September 21
Games turning into nightmare for U.S.
By Jim Litke
Associated Press

BLACKTOWN, Australia -- There are days on the sports calendar that you are supposed to dread being the opponent.

The fight after Mike Tyson gets a bill for back taxes from the IRS.

The start after Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez gets bombed.

The game after the U.S. softball team loses two in a row.

OK, scratch that last one.

Suddenly the Americans aren't so scary anymore. Awaiting a breakout game in an Olympic tournament they should have cruised through, they broke down instead for the third game in a row. Forget all the talk about a dynasty; this one has thrown a tire.

This time, it came against Australia. Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the 13th inning and down to their last out, the Aussies got a walk-off home run by Peta Edebone for a 2-1 win.

The U.S. women craned their necks following the arc of the shot over the left-field fence, then hung their heads and walked off in stunned silence.

"It's almost like the Olympics isn't real," said pitcher Lisa Fernandez, who went the distance, giving up just two hits and striking out a numbing 25 Australians.

"I'm 0-for-whatever at the plate and I was already nervous coming in because of the expectations. I want someone to pinch me and wake me from this nightmare."

Australia caught the Americans already reeling -- two days after the reigning gold-medal champions had their 112-game win streak snapped by Japan and barely 12 hours after China extended the losing streak to two.

Considering the way the United States has dominated softball since the game went international 35 years ago, the two losses -- in the two longest games in Olympic history, no less -- constituted a drought. The last time the Americans lost two straight was the final two games of the 1982 world championships. They had never lost three straight internationals in a season.

The losses to China and Japan were especially vexing, since both came after the kind of late-inning breakdowns that makes a team sweat its ability to play under pressure. But the one to Australia was even more troubling, since Edebone homered off Fernandez, the best U.S. pitcher.

In a haunting way, it echoed a United States-Australia game in Atlanta that ended when Aussie Joanne Brown ruined Fernandez' bid for a perfect game with a similar walk-off home run.

"I didn't know it went out until the first-base coach told me to touch all the bases," Edebone said. "Now I understand the emotions Joey went through in '96. It's a feeling that takes you over."

The Americans' problem during the last three games has been just the opposite; no one has taken over anything.

Against Japan, Dot Richardson, who turns 39 Friday and used to be their most reliable fielder, made two errors in the 11th inning that led to both runs. Fernandez, the most accomplished hitter in the game, went 0-for-6 in that same loss -- part of an 0-for-the-Olympics slump that would stretch to 18 at-bats by the end of the China game.

After the Japan loss, she begged her teammates to keep faith in her and predicted, "I'd be worried if I were the rest of the teams."

But first China, and now Australia, turned out to be anything but worried.

With pitcher Zhang Yanqing throwing like Martinez and squealing like tennis star Monica Seles with each follow-through to the plate, the Chinese stayed with Americans through the seven innings of regulation and like Japan, waited for them to self-destruct.

Against Japan, it took 11 innings; against China, 14. It looked like the string might end Thursday, when Christie Ambrosi finally delivered an RBI single in the top half of the 13th, especially the way Fernandez was throwing.

She said a day earlier she would be grateful to get her problems at the plate behind her, and take her chances at dominating the game with her pitching arm instead of with her bat. Now we know how that turned out.

The likelihood is that the Americans will still advance from the eight-team pool into the four-team medal round. But unlike Atlanta, they're not scaring anyone anymore, and to repeat their golden debut, the U.S. women will have to win five games in a row.

"Things happen for a reason. It's a bigger challenge now. If we come back and win gold," Fernandez said, "there will be no sweeter win."

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