Gold Doesn’t Always Lead to Gem

Ben Sheets and Mike Neill, two players seemingly headed in different directions, characterized the composition of the surprising U.S. baseball team that won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia last year.

Sheets, 22, was a first-round draft choice of the Milwaukee Brewers in 1999 and already is a member of the club’s starting rotation. Neill, 31, is playing with the Pawtucket Red Sox, the triple-A affiliate of the Boston Red Sox. He is in his 11th minor league season, having only 15 major league at-bats in that time, and isn’t certain what the future holds.

The U.S. team might not have won without the contributions of Sheets and Neill.

In fact, it was Neill’s seventh-inning single against Mexico in the semifinals of the Pan-Am Games, producing a 2-1 victory, that enabled the U.S. to qualify for the Olympics, and it was his two-run home run against Japan in the 13th inning that ended the longest game in Olympic history and gave the U.S. a 4-2 victory in the first game in Australia. Neill went six for 29 with three home runs, but he has spent too many years in the minors, been on too many buses, not to know the score.

“Just because you get a few hits in Australia doesn’t mean you’ll get a few in the International League,” he said. “In sports, you have to prove yourself every day. Unfortunately, in terms of baseball, I don’t know if what I did in the Olympics had any impact on my career at all.

“I was hoping it would catapult me into a major league opportunity. I’m still waiting for that break.

“I think, in the long run, it will have more impact as a life experience, and in that regard it was incredible.

“I mean, we were basically a ragtag bunch of guys who nobody thought had a chance except that we believed in ourselves, and the result was baseball at its best.”

Pawtucket is a long way from Sydney, and outfielder Neill has been nursing a hamstring strain. The gold medal hangs around the neck of a teddy bear at his parents’ house in North Carolina. Neill was a second-round draft choice of the Oakland Athletics out of Villanova in 1991, and he is thinking about returning to Villanova to finish his degree work in finance. It’s just that he feels he always has been able to hit when healthy and maybe that opportunity still will come.

“There’s one thing for sure,” he said. “If I never get another major league at-bat, I can take pride in having represented the country and in what I’ve done in international competition.”

Sheets--4-4 with a 3.83 earned-run average with the Brewers--will long remember Australia as well. He pitched a dramatic, three-hit, 4-0 victory over heavily-favored Cuba in the title game to give the U.S. the gold medal. Although some organizations refused to expose their top young pitchers and players, the Brewers didn’t hesitate.

“We had no qualms about putting Ben in the Olympic spotlight,” Brewer General Manager Dean Taylor said. “Some organizations were concerned about injuries, but you can be injured playing catch. We thought the rewards far outweighed the risks, and we think Ben is a better pitcher today because of it. Shutting out Cuba while representing your country with a gold medal on the line translates to tremendous growth.”