Caught Looking : Barbara Jordan, an All-American at CS Northridge, Still Can’t Believe There Is No Room for Her on the ’96 U.S. Olympic Softball Team

Barbara Jordan sat at the kitchen table of her family’s home the other day trying to put on a genial front.

Recounting the roller coaster ride of emotions she experienced at the final tryouts for the first U.S. Olympic softball team, the former Cal State Northridge All-American gamely struggled to form a smile.

Let’s just say that she is a better ballplayer than an actress.

“I have to make this sound positive,” she said again and again.

But her disappointment is plainly evident.

Jordan, 30, is a member of the team. But not in the way she anticipated. She is among five alternates to the squad of 15 who will suit up for the United States when softball makes its Olympic debut next July in Columbus, Ga.

“That’s the bright side,” Jordan said. “I’m there. My dream is still alive.”

Barely.

Jordan, a five-time Amateur Softball Assn. All-American, was added to the team when another player declined to accept an alternate’s position.

As an alternate, Jordan will practice with the team, play as a member of the squad during pre-Olympic tournaments and receive the same training stipend as the other players. But when it’s time to take the field for the first Olympic game, the only place saved for her will be a seat inside the stadium.

At least that’s the plan. Jordan isn’t convinced.

“I’m not going to be in the stands,” she said emphatically. “I’m playing in the Olympics. I’m telling you now that I am.

“I don’t know how, but deep down inside I believe I’m going to be there. I cannot see my career ending in the stands, watching [the United States] win a gold medal.”

Then again, she didn’t foresee herself getting left off the active list in the first place.

Jordan was a starting outfielder for U.S. teams that won several international tournaments in the past few years. In the Olympic trials the first week of this month in Oklahoma City, she batted better than .400.

“I always thought I was one of the best four outfielders, and I was always told by my peers that I was one of the best four outfielders,” Jordan said. “Someone asked me once, ‘Well, what if you don’t make it?’ I was like, I can’t even think that way.”

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Jordan certainly has an impressive resume. Always a solid fielder, she was the fiery offensive catalyst of Northridge teams that won NCAA Division II championships in 1984, ’85 and ’87. And her teams have kept right on winning.

In the past three Olympic Festivals, Jordan’s teams have earned two gold medals and a silver. Her summer team, the Redding, Calif., Rebels, has won three consecutive national ASA championships.

Of course, Jordan isn’t the only top-notch player placed on the Olympic waiting list. None of the five outfielders from the U.S. team that won a gold medal in the Pan American Games in March made the Olympic team.

“When did somebody take my position away? When did this happen? These are just some of the things I ask myself,” Jordan said. “But there are no answers. I understand that.”

Jordan has written an appeal, asking the seven-member selection committee to explain her exclusion from the squad. She was supposed to receive a reply by early last week, but still hasn’t been contacted.

“You know how many people want to see [the response to] my appeal?” Jordan says. “A lot!”

The Olympic team was announced on Labor Day. The players reported to a hotel room at 7 in the morning and were given a sheet of paper listing the team.

Stunned, Jordan took the list to the second floor of the hotel, where she sat with catcher Michelle Gromacki, a friend who also was unexpectedly left off the team.

“People were crying all over the place,” Jordan said. “We just sat there staring at the list, looking at each other and and saying, ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.’

“And I still can’t. I can’t even sleep at night. I wake up and think, I can’t believe I’m not on the [active roster].”

Jordan has faced pain before. She has come back from two knee surgeries, and permanent wires help hold her jaw in place--the vestige of a brutal beaning.

Mended parts and now a twice-broken heart. In November, 1988, Jordan’s sister and confidant, Beverly, was murdered by her fiance.

“I felt as bad not making the team as when my sister died,” Jordan said.

She is not exaggerating. Jordan often said in the months leading up to the selection of the U.S. squad that “I would rather die than not make the Olympic team.”

What she is left with now is a glimmer of hope, that some way, somehow, she will make it onto that field on the 22nd day of July, 1996.

“I’m not super religious or anything, but I think about what I’ve been through and I’ve definitely had my hard times,” Jordan said. “God puts everybody through certain tests. . . . I think He knows I will overcome it.

“Just think about it. At 7 o’clock in the morning I wasn’t on the team, and 40 minutes later I was. I feel like God thought that it was so wrong, he put me on the team.”

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Of the alternates, Jordan is the only outfielder. But even if her play leading up to the Games is better than the other women at her position, Jordan will not be activated. She will be placed on the team only if an active player is injured, disqualified or quits.

“If I go on an incredible tear, that doesn’t change anything,” she said. “But I will feel better about me, knowing that I gave everything I had.

“That’s why I have some peace of mind even now, even though I’m devastated. I know I did my best. And I’m going to keep doing my best.”

Jordan thinks about the 47 women who, by the time the Olympic team was selected, were on airplanes bound for home after the trials.

“There were girls there who were crying and you look at them and think, ‘You had no chance [to make the team],’ ” Jordan said. “But it doesn’t matter. That was their dream and their dream was over.

“And that’s why I’m still thankful. I’m thankful I’m an alternate because my dream still isn’t over.”

The players who did not make it, she said, now have a representative--her.

“I’m going to take them with me, because I’m playing for them, too,” she said. “To me, that’s a lot of emotion, a lot of positive force to take with me.”

In November, Jordan and the rest of the Olympic team will play in a tournament in Australia. Next spring, training begins in earnest as the squad opens camp in Columbus and begins a U.S. tour of exhibition games.

Jordan is looking forward to getting back on the field, where she expects her psychological wounds to heal at an accelerated pace.

Not making the active roster is something she says “will never add up” to her.

“But that part is behind me,” she said. “Now I want to concentrate on what I can control.

“I’m going to play because I love to play. They have taken away what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, but they can’t take away my love for the game.”