Fullerton’s Beck Gives Best Pitch to Olympics

Mark Beck couldn’t tell you the time if Big Ben itself were clanging away in the distance. He couldn’t recite the day of the week if handed a calendar. His mind is mush, his senses temporarily dulled by this unlikely try at a place on the U.S. Olympic baseball team.

He was last home about a month and a half ago--for a day, though Beck didn’t remember it. Then he and the rest of the Cal State Fullerton team flew to Omaha and the College World Series. Beck, a pitcher, brought three pairs of jeans, nine T-shirts and one shirt with a collar. He figured he overpacked.

That was before the U.S. Baseball Federation invited him to go for the gold. Come, it said, to wonderful Millington, Tenn., site of the world’s largest inland naval base and, curiously enough, headquarters for this year’s National USA Senior team. Submit yourself to Navy-style accommodations, to early-morning wake-up calls, to languid nights and baseball-filled days. See the Far East. See Idaho. Meet new and interesting people. Pay your own way for the privilege. Eat so much banquet food that you think dais is a French dish. Sign enough autographs to get writer’s cramp. Pitch till you plop.

Sure, said Beck.

So here he is, one of the remaining 25 players on a roster that must be delicately shaved to 20 in time for September’s World Championships in Italy and shortly thereafter, the Summer Games in Seoul. All Beck wanted was an opportunity to prove himself, to fulfill a teen-age dream. He’s five players away.

“I always knew that I had it,” he said. “I just wanted a chance to show it.”

At last check, through 2 starts and 16 innings of work, Beck had a 1.13 earned-run average, 18 strikeouts and only 5 walks. Not bad for show-and-tell.

“On the last day of the World Series, they told me I was invited,” Beck said. “I went to the team from Omaha, got there and pitched seven innings and had a one-hitter. I’ve been playing ever since.”

Strange thing is, Beck wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be home by now, a victim of an early roster adjustment. At least that’s what the mysterious agate item said June 22 in newspapers across the country.

Note--Team leaves today for five-game series in Japan. (Pitcher Gregg) Olson is recovering from mononucleosis and will not make trip. He’ll rejoin team when it returns on July 4, and Beck will be dropped.

Turns out Olson never rejoined the team. He junked the amateur experience for the Baltimore Oriole organization (he was the team’s first-round choice and the fourth player selected overall in the June draft) and a head start on a pro career. He later told The Washington Post that he was simply tired of international competition, that it was time to try a new challenge. Guess he already had too many Olympic medals.

All of this left Beck slightly embarrassed and somewhat perplexed. Why his name? And how did this get started in the first place? Nobody knows.

“That was totally incorrect about him being dropped,” said Bob Bensch, communications director of the U.S. Baseball Federation. “I don’t know where they got that from.”

Beck has his own guess.

“(Olson) just wanted to go home, and they just used my name,” he said. “I’m only a sophomore. It made me look bad.”

To ease the confusion, Olympic Coach Mark Marquess of Stanford pulled Beck aside and told him to disregard the newspaper item. “You’re still on the team,” he said.

Not only that, but Beck, who had to pay his own way for the chance to even try out, was told that the federation would reimburse him for all costs. End of mini-controversy.

Now all Beck has to worry about is finding a way onto the final roster. Nine pitchers remain. The most games an Olympic tournament team could play is five, so nine pitchers would be too many. Six, maybe seven, would be a more realistic number.

Beck has a few things going for him, including this most recent season with the Titans. Though his 10-7 record and 3.80 ERA weren’t awe-inspiring, his 162 strikeouts in just 135 innings commanded attention. He also has international experience, thanks to his play on the U.S. team in last year’s Intercontinental Cup in Cuba. Then, of course, there is the recent trip to Japan, where the senior team won 2 of 5 games. “We handed it to them, really,” Beck said. “We lost by one run twice and by two the other time. It was our first series playing together.”

Since then, the team has traveled to Washington, California, Idaho, Tennessee and North Carolina. Today it’s in Tulsa, Okla. After a while, Beck loses track.

“I don’t know where we’re going tomorrow,” Beck said earlier this week, after arriving in Chattanooga for a game against the Taiwan national team. “I think we’re going to Durham, wherever that is.”

It’s in North Carolina, Mark.

“Oh . . . whatever. I don’t even know what day it is anymore.”

Forgive him. His got his last real sleep, he said, in the Omaha airport terminal June 12, as he waited to board a flight to Memphis, which is about 20 minutes from beautiful Millington. Those three pairs of jeans are in shock. The T-shirts would break if you tossed them to the floor. The collared shirt is now ready for dust-rag duty.

Worse yet, is the federation-issued clothing that team members have to wear on planes: dark polyester slacks that you’d expect to find at Moose club meetings and some golf shirts with the team logo.

Mr. Blackwell would cringe. Mr. Marquess loves them.

“Everybody hates them,” Beck said. “They get hot and sweaty. And they’re polyester . . .” Beck laughs.

But Beck wears them. And I’m guessing he’d hate the slacks considerably less if told he was going on a long plane ride in September. Destination: Seoul.