- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 September 2000 02.03 BST
The Cuban manager Servio Borges paid tribute to Sheets and shrugged: "It's just a game of baseball." He may find it harder saying that back home.
Cuba had never lost a game since baseball was introduced to the Olympics in 1992 before a surprise defeat against the Dutch last week. However, the rules had turned against them since professionals were at last allowed to compete and, theoretically, the US could send a dream team of all-stars.
But the major league clubs had no intention of losing any players they needed at a crucial stage of the season and sent out instead a much-derided group of youngsters, with only a couple of old sweats. Sheets is no more than one of many up-and-comers making his way towards the top of the Milwaukee Brewers farm system. At least, that's all he was .
"This guy's a great pitcher," said the US manager, 73-year-old Tommy Lasorda, who has specialised in making Bill Shankly sound inhibited. "He's got ice water in his veins. He's just a baby as far as baseball is concerned and look at what he's done in front of the whole world."
Lasorda, who managed the Los Angeles Dodgers in four World Series, had no doubt about the importance of this win. "This is bigger than the World Series. When the Dodgers won, the Dodger fans were happy but no one else was. But today, with this baseball team, the United States of America gets happy. By today everyone in the world knows about these players."
You don't have to buy everything he says to catch the drift. And this is certainly yet another poke in the eye across the Florida Keys to Uncle Sam's longest-running irritant - in the sport Fidel Castro loves most. It may be followed by some smaller-scale digs as well. Round the stadium, at every game of baseball, were a group of inscrutable, self-contained men with radar guns and clipboards: US major-league scouts.
The Cuban pitcher Maels Rodriguez touched 100mph during the middle innings of last night's game. Only a couple of guys in the US can match that, and it makes his potential value astronomical should he make a mistake and go to the wrong departure gate at Sydney Airport today.
It is thought unlikely that any Americans will be lured to a contract in Cuba for a handful of pesos and all the sugar cane they can eat. But the US players may also have their values enhanced. Most of them have been plying their trade in thebackwaters of baseball - the Carolina and the Shenandoah Valley League; in Bangor, Maine, and Cheyenne, Wyoming - waiting for their big chance. Marshalled by Lasorda and the 37-year-old catcher Pat Borders, who won a World Series with Toronto, they made the most of it.
Sydney probably seemed like just another plane stop, with funny dollars and accents, to most of them. Australia has rather more of a baseball tradition than Britain: the game used to be played in the winter and young cricketers such as the Chappells treated it as a useful off-season diversion. There were moments when the stadium seemed more like a little offshoot of the US and not part of these Olympics at all. However, the hot dogs were disgusting and would have been declared unconstitutional (as "cruel and unusual punishment") by the US Supreme Court.
Most of the spectators were locals, which anaesthetised the underlying tensions. Last Saturday, when Cuba won the preliminary game against the US, there was a near-brawl. This was a routine baseball argument rather than a fight over Elian Gonzalez, Guantanamo and the future of the west. None the less, the US players thought the Cubans were keyed up and antagonistic.
In the final, though, everything was tranquil. The US underdogs scraped into the final only early yesterday morning, with a late home run in the rain-delayed semi-final against Korea. However, Borges surprisingly started one of his lesser pitchers, Pedro Luis Lazo, against them. Mike Neill of the Seattle Mariners hit Lazo for the only home run of the night in the opening inning, Cuba never regained control, and in the fifth inning the US bats drove in three more runs. Sheets, meanwhile, remained unwavering.
It all happened on the day it was announced that Rupert Murdoch's Fox network has bid for the TV rights to the major leagues for the next five years. Here was one part of Rupe's portfolio, baseball, coming together with another, Australia. Perhaps the guys can dwell on that on the journey back to Havana, and be grateful there's still something that can make them glad to be Cubans.
