Sun, Jul 05, 2009
 U.S. coach Mike Candrea, right, points ex-Wildcat Lovie Jung home during the Ashland, Ohio, stop of the U.S. team's 45-city tour.
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 2008
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Beijing Olympics
Going, going, goneSoftball's ouster means likely last hurrah for U.S.
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.03.2008
The Last Great Softball Team spent the past six months pinballing across the country in a bus.
Teammates memorized fast food menus, stopping at burger joints at all hours of the day and night.
They littered their bus with iPods and laptops to make time zoom past, rested their heads on Brookstone neck pillows to sleep sitting up.
"Our greatest highlight," said Jennie Finch, "is the iced coffee McDonald's has added to the menu."
The USA Softball team began its "Bound 4 Beijing" tour on Feb. 19 in Tucson, fitting for a team filled with Old Pueblo ties.
Arizona Wildcats coach Mike Candrea runs the team. UA alums Caitlin Lowe, Lovie Jung and Finch — plus Salpointe Catholic High School grad Tairia Flowers — are in the lineup.
They spent the past six months on the barnstorming tour, which served as equal parts competition primer and public relations barrage.
The team played in 45 cities and in front of more than 200,000 people, in towns such as Sulphur, La., Normal, Ill., and Rapid City, S.D.
They filled small-town parks and minor-league baseball stadiums. Players visited Mount Rushmore and Old Faithful. The team went 59-1.
"Almost everywhere we've gone has been sold out," Candrea said. "The problem is not here in the United States. I think the problem is in Europe."
That is why this is The Last Great Softball Team.
The sport will make its final appearance in the Olympics over the next few weeks. It can only return in later years if the International Olympic Committee has a change of heart. In 2005, the IOC voted to eliminate softball and baseball from future Games.
A lack of European enthusiasm swayed the voters, maybe with good reason. Of the eight teams competing in this year's Olympics, only one — the Netherlands — is from Europe. In addition to the United States and Canada, the Games tout China, Taiwan, Japan, Venezuela and Australia.
Since the sport joined the Games in 1996, only four teams have earned a medal — China, Japan, Australia and the United States.
Candrea will go to England and Italy in September to help promote the sport. If the 2016 Games are awarded to Chicago or Tokyo — cities in the globe's two major softball hotbeds — the sport might have a chance.
"I think that goes well beyond what we can do as a team and a staff," Candrea said.
Quite possibly, the team's success has also been its downfall.
In softball's three Olympiads, the Americans have won three gold medals and gone 24-4, with three losses in extra innings. They have outscored their opponents 117-16.
In 2004, the team won nine games by a combined score of 51-1.
The Americans want to dominate — but if they do, they will face cries that the sport has no global appeal.
"It's a lose-lose for us," Lowe said.
Candrea is unapologetic.
"There have been other sports in the Olympic Games where the same thing has happened, and it hasn't affected those sports," Candrea said. "The Olympics is about excellence.
"When you're on the outside looking in, it sometimes looks easy. But it really never was."
Flowers realizes the scope of the elimination when she talks to her teammates.
"We talk sports, we talk life," she said. "It always comes up, 'What are you gonna do afterward?'
"I'll be done, but some of these girls would want to go for 2012."
Lowe, only one year removed from a four-time All-American career at the UA, could conceivably start in center field for the 2012 team, too.
"I'm lucky — I get to participate in these Olympic Games," she said. "I would have been devastated if it happened in 2008."
Finch is the face of softball, if not the Olympics. At the U.S. Olympics send-off two weeks ago, photos of her and President Bush beamed across the world. Finch laughed that she's been to the White House a few times, but it never gets old.
She called the barnstorming tour "a true celebration" and a "testament to how much our sport is growing." But Finch knows the uphill battle the sport faces.
Not that she'll have any pity.
"We're thinking someone wants to take our gold," she said. "I think our goal is to go over there playing the best softball this world's ever seen."
At an exhibition game this year — Finch can't quite remember where — she was signing autographs and met a young fan.
"A little girl comes up to me and says, 'Get us our fourth gold, Jennie,' " she said. "How cool is that?
"It's for our country; it's bigger than us."
The Last Great Softball Team's legacy might be just that — dominance in its fourth Olympiad, not knowing if it is the final one.
"If we come home 4 for 4, we'll be extremely ecstatic," she said. "Wearing this uniform, nothing but gold is acceptable."
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