Riding the Road to Beijing Aboard the U.S.A. Local

Fri May 30 09:00:37 EDT 2008

By JOHN BRANCH
Published: May 30, 2008
ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — Just where in the world was the United
States Olympic softball team? It should not take eight hours
to get here from Visalia, even with a McDonald’s stop in Madera
and an out-of-the-way detour through Palo Alto.

Everything else was set. The temporary bleachers were in place.
A dozen portable toilets were lined behind them. Concession tents
had sprouted. The old pine trees down the right-field line were
trimmed to make more room around the rough little diamond at
the edge of the Sonoma State campus. The 2,000 tickets, at $25
each, went quickly. More could have sold had there been room
to put everyone. 

An equipment truck parked nearby. Its side was a mobile billboard,
showing 18 life-size, smiling women in red, white and blue uniforms.
“48 Cities. 43,522 miles. One goal: Gold!” it read. 

This may be the United States team’s final pursuit of gold. The
International Olympic Committee decided that the 2008 Summer
Games would be the last for softball, citing lack of interest
worldwide, especially in Europe. Yet Team USA marches on, “Bound
4 Beijing,” as the tour was dubbed — the “4” an apparent reference
to the quest for a fourth-consecutive Olympic gold medal. It
is winding its way through 25 states to 62 scheduled games, including
one here the next afternoon. 

That explained why the bleachers sat empty, for now.

Finally, a shiny, logo-less bus with tinted windows — shiny and
tinted enough to make you think rock band — eased around the
corner, with a police escort. The bus parked. The door opened.

One by one, members of Team USA stepped out into silence. They
wore matching gear and glum expressions. They carried bags of
bats and plastic pails full of softballs across fresh bark to
the chain-link dugout.

This was an “off” day, a scheduling misnomer. It included an
early wake-up after a night game, a scheduled five-hour bus ride
that somehow took seven and a half, and a practice that lasted
three hours until darkness chased the team back to the bus and
over to the Hampton Inn by the highway in search of dinner and
sleep.

The tour, with occasional breaks, spreads over 159 days, from
Feb. 19 to July 26. For every hour in front of adoring fans are
dozens more on a bus, at a hotel, along a highway rest stop,
on another field in another town practicing in front of empty
bleachers.

“There are times where it’s hard to figure out where you’re at,”
outfielder Jessica Mendoza said during one particularly grueling
stretch in California. “There’s times I’ve gone to the wrong
room, knocked on the wrong door. There’s times I’ve gotten on
the elevator and my floor isn’t on it. I’m like, where am I?
Where do I go?”

No other Olympic team does this. No other dares to prepare so
publicly, to travel so incessantly. No other team halts its postgame
autograph sessions after an hour because there are too many people
and the bus is running and there is somewhere else to be. 

Most Olympians simply appear in August for their fleeting chance
at capturing a nation’s heart. The softball team goes on the
road searching for it, and then pulls it like luggage all the
way to the Games.

“As much as we are literally, like, hodgepodging all over the
entire country, that’s what makes it so cool,” Mendoza said.
“When we’re in the Olympics, we’re not just representing where
we’re from or the school we went to. But we’re Rohnert Park,
Calif. We’re Nashville, Tenn. We’re Tampa, Fla.; Spokane, Wash.;
Sulphur, La. We’re talking every corner of this country.”

By Coach Mike Candrea’s admission, it is not an ideal way to
prepare, spending chunks of time in buses and hotels, then being
told how great you are by fans, including legions of young girls
who idolize the likes of Mendoza, Jennie Finch, Cat Osterman
and Crystl Bustos.

“In one sense, we’re doing the right thing by reaching down to
the grass roots and giving these young kids a chance to see these
athletes, possibly for the last time,” Candrea said. “On the
other hand, from a coaching situation, trying to prepare a team,
it’s not the ultimate situation that you’d like to have. So you’ve
got to kind of find a balance there.”

Away from the adoration and amid the monotony, players acknowledge
the difficulty of what they are doing. 

FULL ARTICLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/sports/olympics/30softball.html?ex=1212811200&en=bb3d58463cd3deab&ei=5070&emc=eta1

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