July 23, 1996
Field of dreams
By TERRY JONES -- In Atlanta
COLUMBUS, Georgia -- There is no cornfield out there in left field.
And this yard is somewhat smaller in size.
But this is softball's field of dreams and Canada's field of dreams.
It's Golden Park, the Olympic softball park, the rejigged home of the Columbus Red Stixx, the Cleveland Indians' Class-A farm club in the South Atlantic League.
It's a cozy little park that is part of the best-organized venue of these entire Olympics.
In the running
This is where Canada has a chance -- a very real chance, the only real chance -- to win a team sport medal.
And that chance got better last night with Canada's late rally to beat Puerto Rico 4-0 after China lost to Japan in the morning. The U.S., Japan and Canada remain the only unbeaten teams in the eight-team, round-robin tournament.
That's a team sport medal, as in tournament, medal round, etc., not synchronized swimming, not rowing eights.
It's been a while since we won one. A long while.
"Don't tell me how long it's been," said pitcher Deb Sonnenberg, of Leduc, the left-hander who came in to throw three straight strikeouts to put the 4-0 win over Puerto Rico away. "I don't want to know."
Would you believe the 1932 Adolf Hitler Berlin Olympics?
We won basketball silver in that one.
This is the first time softball has been a full-medal deal at the Olympics and it's a big deal for the sport and a medal would make it an even bigger deal for the Canadians.
Every day that the sport is shown on television back home softball takes a large leap forward.
I went so far to suggest the opening game -- Canada's thrilling 10th-inning win over Chinese Taipei, the last five innings of which were shown on CBC in which it captivated a crowd of major-league baseball writers in front of the monitors at the main press centre -- gave softball 100 times the credibility and legitimacy than it had the day before.
And the president of Softball Canada agreed with that.
"No question. One hundred times. Sure," said Dale McMann, the ex-Edmontonian, who now lives in Prince George, B.C. "We have 3 million people in Canada who play this game in one form or another. And until these last 48 hours in these first two games there were next to no Canadians who thought of this sport as anything but a recreational game. These girls are now showing the country and the entire world what great athletes they are."
The ladies of this updated version of A League Of Their Own are hardly enduring any hardships here.
Without question this is the best venue at these Olympics. Everything is perfect here. Nowhere else in these Atlanta Games could you even come close to saying that with a straight face.
There are no traffic or transportation problems, and everyone is absolutely in love with everything, everywhere they look.
The black flag
It's an Olympic Oasis.
Well, other than the 93 F heat and the 61% humidity, which sent the black flag high up on the pole behind the right-field stands at the start of the Canadian game last night. The black flag warns people of extreme danger because of the heat and humidity. It also forced my computer to crash and for me to write this column long- hand.
But no sweat to the Canadian girls, who played this game dressed in black.
"We've got big fans in the dugout and water and ice," said infielder Candace Murray of North Delta, B.C. "We're fine."
And everything else here is so fantastic that when I asked the girls about it two of them went, "Shhhhhh."
"We've got to keep this quiet, we don't want everyone from Atlanta coming up to our village," said Sonnenberg of the headquarters at the Fort Benning military base.
"We have our own rooms, with our own showers and our own big queen-sized beds.
"We have a fridge and a microwave and lots of room and, of course, air conditioning ... it's fantastic."
