They’re All-Stars of 2000

The Dream Team in Barcelona is not necessarily Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone and Co.

How about Jim Courier, Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Co.?

Or, how about Phil Nevin, Jeffrey Hammonds, Calvin Murray, Michael Tucker, Chad McConnell, Charles Johnson, B.J. Wallace, Rick Greene and Co.?

What? You say you never heard of any of these guys?

You will.

Look at it this way: Suppose you were in Barcelona and you heard there was an Olympic baseball game featuring Jose Canseco, Kirby Puckett, Cecil Fielder, Darryl Strawberry, Barry Bonds and Wade Boggs? Would you hustle down to Las Ramblas and seek out those street-corner hustlers for a set of tickets?

Well, consider this: In 1984 when baseball was a demonstration sport in the L.A. Olympics, the United States fielded a team that included Will Clark, Mark McGwire, Barry Larkin, Bill Swift, Chris Gwynn, B.J. Surhoff, Cory Snyder and Shane Mack. If you don’t know who they are, you’re probably not too clear on who Lou Gehrig was.

Every one of those players listed above, from Phil Nevin to Rick Greene, is a first-round major league draft choice. In other words, you’re looking at the 1995 San Francisco Giants or New York Mets or Baltimore Orioles or Oakland Athletics or Florida Marlins or Montreal Expos. They beat Italy so badly--10-0--Tuesday that they stopped it in the eighth inning like a bad fight. An Olympic baseball rule--which basketball might look into--stops a game when one team gets 10 runs ahead.

That’s how good these guys are. Take Nevin. Organized baseball has been fighting over him since he was in high school. The Dodgers tried to get him three years ago. This year, he was the first draft pick overall in the country. The Houston Astros, who picked first, grabbed him. They expect he will be another Cal Ripken Jr.

Phil is a power-hitting, contact-hitting third baseman. He is a good fielder and adequate runner, with good range. He hits the curveball very well. He swings at good pitches, doesn’t strike out a lot, hits to all fields and, last year at Cal State Fullerton, hit .390 with 20 home runs and 75 runs batted in in 55 games. He was the MVP at the recent College World Series. He hit .526.

He was batting .459 in the Olympics, with two home runs and four RBIs after three games.

Dream teams come only one to a country. But they may come two to a sport. No one knows their names, either, but the Cuban team, which has been walking over opposition, has the first four leaders in batting averages, the first three in slugging averages and the leader in RBIs, the two top home run hitters and the two top run-scorers. They also sound like the Ruth Yankees.

Don’t expect any of them at Cooperstown--or even at Dodger Stadium, however. Fidel Castro is not only the last of the Communists, he’s the last of the amateurs. He never let Teofilo Stevenson out of the country to become the heavyweight champion of the world and, if there’s a Willie Mays on the Cuban team, he better find a boat. There will be no No. 1 draft picks in this lineup, no matter how good they are.

The Americans played less like a team in a dream than one in a funk Wednesday when they lost to the Cubans, 9-6, in a game that was so awful it went on for two days.

But you have to consider this: Castro was sending his best big-league team. Some of these guys would be leading the National League in hitting right now, whereas the American kids won’t be leading it till about 1995. We should be sending Clemens, McGwire, Canseco, Van Slyke, Bonds and Fielder to the Olympics if the game wants to keep pace with basketball. In fact, we could send the 1984 Olympic team.

I didn’t really come to Barcelona to see a baseball game. On the other hand, I didn’t come to see an NBA All-Star team engage in a series of exhibition matches.

Still, a dream team is a dream team.

Of course, if the 1927 Yankees were to show up at an Olympics here, a Spanish crowd would hardly turn away from the bullfights to cheer them. This is not exactly Yankee Stadium, or Fenway Park. In fact, Larry Bird showed up at the United States-Italy game, and the crowd immediately turned its back on the hits, runs and errors on the field to flock around the basketball player for his autograph. The Dream Team player upstaged the future dream team on its own turf. Larry Bird would probably get no more than a draw with Roger Clemens--or Mark McGwire--in a major league ballpark. At Viladecans, where the game was hardly the sellout crowd Bird is used to, baseball was not even, so to speak, in Larry Bird’s ballpark, even though he was in theirs.

“This is not Fenway Park!” a reporter shouted at Bird. “This is better!” Bird countered. “This is the way it should be.”

It is not likely the Spanish will be opting for an expansion franchise in the grand old game. All the noise from the crowd came from the Americans. The Spanish are more used to a guy carrying a cape and sword instead of a bat and glove, and, if one of the teams is called the bulls, it’s real.

The Italian team showed up in Dodger look-alike uniforms. They play a little like the Dodgers, too. They have been outscored, 38-3, in four games.

Basketball is hardly a corrida , either, in Spain but the average Barcelonista takes to the Dream Team as if the players were rock stars.

Most athletes take this spotlight-hugging by the basketball players in stride--or say they do--but Nevin is not all that philosophical. He would not be happy to see that professionalism extended to his sport. “I passed on the Dodgers, and a big reason was because I wanted to play in the Olympics,” he says. “It was a dream. I’m not sure it’s a dream for some of these pro basketball players. But they don’t need this exposure, and it takes away from some young player who could use it.”

Would an equivalent pro lineup--a squad with, say, a Stan Musial, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Sandy Koufax on it--have usurped the scene quite as thoroughly as the NBA All-Stars? Or could baseball ever overtake basketball on the world stage? “They’re learning our game,” Nevin says. “Their pitchers rely on breaking stuff, sliders and changeups, but they’re not afraid to throw their curveballs for strikes, and they’re not afraid to throw one on ball three.”

The Americans made too many mistakes against Cuba. But one loss does not destroy a dream. After all, the ’84 team lost the gold to Japan.

Says Nevin: “Even if we lost the first one to Cuba, we could still win the gold medal.”

That’s all any dream team can do.