8702080977
DETROIT FREE PRESS
870816
Sunday, August 16, 1987
METRO FINAL
1D
MITCH ALBOM
SEE ALSO STATE EDITION 1D
Copyright (c) 1987, Detroit Free Press
PAN AM DUEL IN THE SUN HAS PERFECT CAST, ENDING
CORRECTION RAN August 17, 1986
getting it straight
* Sunday's sports section reported Tyrone Griffin of the U.S.
Pan-American Games baseball team batting from the wrong side of
the plate on his two homers against Cuba. He batted left-handed
for the first, right-handed for the game-winning second.
INDIANAPOLIS -- It was a perfect American moment in need of a perfect
American hero. Bottom of the ninth. Two out. Score tied. Crowd on its feet,
waving flags, screaming madly:
"U-S-A! U-S-A!"
Drama? Ho. You'd have to look a long while for a purer drama than this: a
humid August afternoon on a minor league field where perhaps the two best
amateur baseball teams in the world, one Cuban, one American, had scratched
and pounded and finessed each other to a 4-4 deadlock with one out to go
before extra innings. Drama? Come on.
"NOW BATTING . . . " boomed the PA voice.
Isn't this every kid's dream? Isn't this the ending to every sports movie
ever made? Cuba had not lost a Pan Am baseball game since 1967. Cuba had a
pitcher on the mound who towered over everybody. ("It seemed like he was in
your face when he let go of the ball," one batter would say.) Cuba was tough,
awesome, confident, with "amateur" players in their late 20s and early 30s.
And the American team? A collection of college kids on summer break. The
Pan Am Games. Once every four years. Isn't this the dream moment? "NOW BATTING
. . ." Isn't it?
Enter Tyrone Griffin, age 19.
Perfect.
Praying for a base hit
"I was just praying to get a base hit," he would say, as if following a
script. But then, the whole thing seemed to be following a script. Here was
Griffin, the son of a Tampa truck driver, a smallish kid with a cherubic
face, who runs the monorail at an amusement park during breaks from college.
The monorail? A truck driver?
Wait. It gets better. No one in his family ever played baseball. When he
was eight, a friend rang the bell and asked Tyrone's mother whether her son
could come to a Little League tryout. Mona Griffin wound up in the bleachers
every Saturday afternoon that year. She saw Tyrone strike out and ground out
and strike out again. "He was a terrible hitter," she would recall.
And yet here they were again, 11 years later, another Saturday in the sun
-- only now Tyrone was a switch-hitting college sophomore (Georgia Tech)
who'd been drafted by the Baltimore Orioles, and he'd already hit a solo home
run, in the seventh inning (batting righty), and he was at the plate now
(batting lefty) with two out, one on, bottom of the ninth, score tied, fans
jeering in Spanish and fans cheering in English and a worldwide audience
holding its breath. Surely this was written on paper somewhere.
"I was just praying for him to get a base hit," Mona Griffin would say.
"We were just praying he would get a base hit," a teammate, Mike Fiore,
would say.
They were praying, she was praying, and everyone was sweating, for this
was a heated afternoon, the burn of politics was everywhere: Banners were
waved, police officers combed the crowds, on guard for disruptions like the
melee that had broken out at a boxing event the night before. "Whenever it's
the U.S. and Cuba . . .," the police chief had said.
But now it had all come down to this: baseball. Two outs. The giant Cuban
left-hander, Pablo Abreu, checked the runner at first and threw over. Checked
him again, threw over again. And again. And again. And finally he turned to
the plate, let the pitch fly and . . .
Kids against the grown-ups
Do we have to tell you? Is there really any doubt? Whack! The ball rose
high, high, an inch for every scream of "GET OUT! GET OUT!" And it got out,
way out, over the left field wall, home run, and the crowd buried itself in
noise and the American team poured from the dugout and Tyrone Griffin, hands
raised in triumph, circled the bases as if destiny was in his spikes.
"Did you know it was gone when you hit it?" someone asked him after the 6-4
victory.
"No," he said. "I kinda wanted to stand there and go like this. . . ." He
puckered his lips and blew, as if his breath could carry the ball out.
He didn't need that. Some other invisible force was taking charge here; the
kind that gives us heroes, magic moments. True, this was not the gold medal
game. That comes next weekend and may well feature these two teams again. But
this was special, because it was the first meeting on U.S. soil -- and the
Cubans hadn't lost in all those years. "We had played them last month in
exhibitions in Cuba," Griffin said. "And it was like kids against the
grown-ups. We were tight.
"But, you know, when you wear this uniform, with the USA on it, it's so
different. People stop you and say, 'You play for the USA? Really?' It makes
you proud."
He smiled, and his eyes went distant for a moment, as if trying to flash
back that swing, that contact. Son of a truck driver. Mom in the stands.
American baseball player in the bottom of the ninth with the score tied and
two out. Whooee.
"That feeling when it went out," he said, "it was so great, so, I don't
know, so, so. . . ."
Perfect? Perfect.
US;BASEBALL;TEAM;COLUMN;CUBA;TYRONE GRIFFIN;GAME;RESULT;
QUOTE;PAN AMERICAN GAMES