USA Baseball Blog

During the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, USA pitcher Don August was so sure he would not pitch a third consecutive day that he left his cleats, cup and fielding glove in his locker.

After all, the righthander out of small Chapman University already had pitched the previous two days, entering in the ninth inning each day – a 16-1 blowout over Italy and a 12-0 win over the Dominican Republic. “I was asked to hold the leads,” he says with a laugh.

So before the USA’s semifinal game against South Korea, August was just preparing to take it easy on the bench. “I thought they had some other guys they wanted to use,” August recalls. “And I thought, hey, I had already gotten to pitch in Dodger Stadium in front of my family, and had already appeared in two Olympic games.

“I was just going to sit on the bench and root for the team.”

But head coach Rod Dedeaux and the U.S. coaching staff had other ideas. The coach told August he would be the first used in relief that day. “I remember thinking, whoa, I didn’t expect that.”

So off he went back into the clubhouse and emerged with cleats on his feet and a fielding glove in his hand.

During the third inning, August was told to begin warming up. By the fifth, he was inserted into a 2-2 game. So much for entering games with a big lead. “This one mattered,” August says. “When I came in it was tied, a man on third and two outs.” After falling behind 2-0 in the count, to the first batter he faced, August eventually coaxed the out needed to get out of the inning.

South Korea never threatened after that.

August tossed up zeroes the remainder of the game, earning the win when the U.S. pushed across three runs in the bottom of the sixth in what wound up a 5-2 win. That earned August the win, and sent the U.S. into the gold medal championship game against Japan. “I pitched in three of the five Olympic games,” he says. “I just wasn’t expecting to pitch that day.”

The U.S. lost in the championship game, but the team did experience having MLB Commissioner Peter Ueberroth – the organizer of the L.A. Olympics – place silver medals around their necks.

The Olympic experience just furthered what had already been a great year for August up to Los Angeles. He was dominant at Division II Chapman College as a junior, earning an invitation to try out for the U.S. Olympic Team. But August initially wasn’t going to attend the tryout at Cal State Fullerton in the fall of 1983. “It was on a Saturday morning,” he says. “I was a lazy college kid who wanted to sleep in.”

Chapman head coach Paul Deese would have none of it, telling August, “Oh, you’re going.”

August attended, and impressed. The next May, he received an invitation to attend a smaller tryout in Louisville consisting of the best players USA Baseball had seen at the various area tryouts like the one at Fullerton. It also didn’t hurt August’s profile that, even though pitching for a D-II program, he was consistently beating major D-I programs such as Cal State Fullerton and USC – the school he had hoped to attend in high school, but which inexplicably stopped recruiting him despite posting an outstanding senior season that spring.

USC’s loss was Chapman’s gain.

August said throughout the entire Olympic Team Tour across the country during the summer of ’84, Dedeaux – the legendary USC coach – never said anything to the pitcher about the snub. “We never talked about it,” August says. “He never brought it up and neither did I.”

During the Team USA tour across the country in preparation for the Olympics, August was drafted in the first round of the 1984 MLB Draft by the Houston Astros, who selected him 17th overall. It was validation that he was among the best pitchers in the country.

“It started that year with the Chapman season,” August says. “I got a lot of recognition. When I pitched, there would be 15 scouts with radar guns on me. Even in the bullpen when I was getting ready to take the mound they would be watching my bullpen session. Everything just worked out that year.”

Two years after the Olympics, August and another pitcher were traded to the Milwaukee Brewers for veteran pitcher Danny Darwin. Houston was surrendering one of its top pitching prospects for a veteran that could immediately help the team’s playoff push.

In 1988, August made his major league debut and finished the season with an outstanding 13-7 mark and 3.09 ERA. His last game in the majors came in 1991. “I kind of battled a couple years in the minors trying to make it back,” he says. Stints in the Mexican League and a five-year run in Taiwan followed. He closed out his playing days in Italy in 2000.

Upon his return to the States, August secured his teaching license and worked fulltime teaching Social Studies and U.S. History to junior high and high school students. Today, he works as a substitute teacher handled all grades and assignments. He also has spent the last 14 years as the head JV baseball coach at Menonomee Falls (Wis.) High School, where he also assists the varsity team. The team won the Wisconsin state title last season. “That was almost as big to me as a lot of other stuff I’ve done in baseball,” he says.

But nothing will be as big as the 1984 Olympics, when Don August was pitching near home, in front of friends and family, and wearing the red, white and blue while at the top of his game.

“That was great, that was awesome,” he says of the experience.

He’s got an Olympic silver medal to prove it.

When he was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the 14^th round of the 2006 MLB First-Year Player Draft, most people who knew Matt LaPorta figured the Florida Gators junior slugging first baseman would sign and forego his senior season in Gainesville.

But most people were wrong.

LaPorta, the 2005 SEC Player of the Year as a sophomore, believed he could improve his draft standing if he returned for his senior year at Florida. Conventional wisdom suggests that players returning to school after being drafted as juniors lose much of their bargaining power. After all, seniors have little leverage remaining when they enter their last season of eligibility.

It can be a difficult decision for a young player. Everyone, it seems, has an opinion. And most aren’t shy about sharing them.

“On one hand it’s a difficult decision because the world says it’s a dumb decision and you keep hearing that you’ll never get as much money as after your junior year in college,” LaPorta says. “It was just a lot of negative things.”

But LaPorta never wavered.  He was used to waiting to fulfill his dream of playing major league baseball. Coming out of Charlotte High School in Punta Gorda, Fla., in 2003, the Chicago Cubs called his name in – like the Red Sox later – the 14^th round. The opportunity to play Division I baseball at Florida lured him away from signing out of high school. LaPorta understood that a down year as a junior in college in which his batting average fell from .328 as a sophomore (while helping the Gators reach the College World Series final), to .259 played a role in his draft placement in 2006. “But I believed in how good I was and believed in the talent I was blessed with,” he says. “I believed in the kind of player I was.”

Indeed, it proved to be a huge positive. LaPorta regained his stroke and earned his second SEC Player of the Year honor, batting .402 with 20 home runs. It was the kind of performance that had helped land him on the 2005 USA Baseball Collegiate National Team two years before where he played alongside some big names – then and now – such as David Price, Max Scherzer and Matt Wieters to name just a few. That tenure helped convince LaPorta he belonged.

The Milwaukee Brewers certainly thought so, taking LaPorta in the first round of the 2007 Draft with the seventh overall pick. His “gamble” of returning to school – he’ll tell you it was no gamble at all – had paid off. He received a $2 million signing bonus.

But even as a professional, Matt’s time with USA Baseball wasn’t through. He was selected to the 2008 United States Olympic Baseball Team where he primarily played left field. In a four-game pre-Olympics exhibition series with Canada, LaPorta slugged three home runs and delivered five RBI. In the Olympics in Beijing, LaPorta was involved in a hard slide at home plate in the fifth inning of a game against the host Chinese. Two innings later, he was struck in the head with a fastball by relief pitcher Chen Kun. LaPorta sustained a minor concussion and was taken to a local hospital. The U.S. won the game 9-1.

He bounced back in the Bronze Medal Game, slugging a home run to help secure a medal for the Americans.

“It was amazing being on the podium and having a medal placed around your neck,” he says. It’s hard to duplicate that feeling. It was a great experience and I’m very grateful for it.”

The Olympic experience remains a highlight of LaPorta’s baseball career, which ended last spring when he retired to begin his new career as a loan officer with SunTrust Mortgage in the Tampa area.  His good friend, former NFL punter Tony Umholtz, introduced him to mortgage banking, and LaPorta – despite not studying it in college and with no real experience in the field – flourished. “I’ve really enjoyed it and I do see it as a long-term career. I do have to say this is harder than baseball. With baseball, I had played it all my life. With this, you learn something every day.”

LaPorta has landed on his feet post-retirement and he’s set up a charitable foundation to help other former players ease into their new lives and careers. LaPorta’s “Next Up” foundation helps ex-players make the most of their opportunities, and assists in resume building, interviewing skills and offers an assessment test to determine what fields make the most sense. “As a baseball player, you haven’t had that many jobs,” he says. “So job skills aren’t necessarily going to stand out on a resume. What we like to do is extract the intangibles of a baseball player that made him successful. And by successful I mean anyone who ever played at any level from A-ball to the big leagues.

“We let them know we’re here for them and to use the foundation as a resource for whatever they need to get done,” he adds.

LaPorta is taking on the business world with the same drive that led him to Florida, the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team and the U.S. Olympic Baseball Team. He says he may coach someday when his kids are older, and he still follows the game.

“I do see myself in some capacity having something to do with baseball,” LaPorta says. “It’s such a great game.”

When David Eckstein was a college infielder at the University of Florida, he asked his coaches to send a note to USA Baseball to let the organization know that the ambitious young man in Gainesville, Florida was interested in tryouts.

He never got a call.

Several years later when the organization was searching for professional players to build a roster for international play, Eckstein – then a major league infielder – again sent word that he would love to come to whatever tryouts were necessary to have a chance to wear the red, white and blue.

He never got a call to tryout that year, either.

But a funny thing happened a few years after Eckstein was named the 2006 World Series MVP for the world champion St. Louis Cardinals; he finally connected with USA Baseball, working as an honorary manager during the 2014 Tournament of Stars, following in the footsteps of his brother, Rick, a former coach in the USA Baseball organization and current batting instructor at the University of Kentucky.

At the Tournament of Stars, Eckstein worked as a position player coordinator, watching hundreds of 18U players. His job: Find talent, which in that setting wasn’t difficult. “It was all around me,” he says.

He worked with USA Baseball all the way through the selection of the 2014 18U National Team 20-man roster. Suddenly, he had to look at the game differently. He had to mine for talent. “I legitimately didn’t know any of the kids, and you’ve only got five days,” Eckstein says. “You’re not looking for a kid to have a good week, you’re looking for a kid with the right reaction and attitude, and how they represent USA. You’re watching them in all aspects of the game including how they are on the bench. I’ll walk over and sit on the bench and just watch.”

It was during one of these impromptu bench sessions in ’14 that Eckstein first saw Nick Madrigal, now at Oregon State. He recalls being impressed. “I’m sitting on the bench, and the players are telling the other players, ‘Man, you got to get up and see this kid hit,’” Eckstein says.

“To me, Nick Madrigal was the best high school shortstop in the nation last year. I’d put him up against anybody, and I have no problem saying that.”

Madrigal was a 17th round pick of the Cleveland Indians last season, but opted to sign a scholarship offer with Oregon State.

“That’s a kid I see a lot of me in,” Eckstein says. “Because if he was even close to 6-foot [he stands 5-7] he’d have been a first rounder.”

Eckstein’s dream of wearing the red, white and blue uniform – remember his earlier efforts? – became reality this summer when he was named a field coach for the 2015 USA Baseball 18U National Team. Working as first base coach, hitting instructor and infield instructor, Eckstein received a gold medal as the team won a third straight world championship by beating host Japan in the title game of the 2015 WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup.

“It was such a great experience over there with that group,” says Eckstein, who had previously travelled to Japan as part of the 2002 MLB All-Star contingent that played a series against the Japanese. “I was so proud to wear the uniform. It was the first time I had ever gotten to wear USA across my chest.”

His work with USA Baseball (which Eckstein says he’s enjoyed as much as anything in his career) is a likely stepping stone for a return to the on-field work in a more permanent role, as instructor, coach or talent advisor at whatever level of baseball comes calling. “I definitely do see myself back on the field at some point,” he says. “Baseball is still my passion.”

His next dream: Coach with his brother, Rick.

But there’s more than baseball in Eckstein’s life these days. He’s taken on a role as a business partner at Her Universe, a company that was the brainchild of his wife, Ashley. The company (heruniverse.com) produces and markets superhero and sci-fi fashionable apparel for girls and women, a group previously unserved in the business world. Among the licenses Her Universe holds: Marvel, Doctor Who, Star Trek, Transformers and Star Wars – the latter a license Ashley was turned down for twice by LucasFilm – that despite that she’s the voice of Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels. Ashley would not be denied. The third time she met with LucasFilm, she secured the license.

“It’s aimed at Fangirls,” Eckstein says of the business model. And business is booming. Eckstein knows a little something about persevering when the odds seem great. A 19th-round pick by the Red Sox in 1997 out of Florida, the 5-foot-6, 179-pound middle infielder played bigger than his physical stature.

David did not study business in college, but he’s been a quick study in learning how the business world works. He credits his baseball career for that.

“Business and baseball are a lot alike,” he says. “You’ve got to stay focused and stay with what you’re good at and not try to do too much. You’ve got to be patient.” For Eckstein, that patience was rewarded when USA Baseball finally called.

“I’ve really enjoyed it,” he says of the experiences with the organization. “And I was really honored to be a part of it.”

Remembering... Ty Griffin

Even now, some 27 years later, Ty Griffin still draws inspiration from the gold medal he and his Team USA teammates won in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

And sometimes others do, too. Case in point, two years ago Griffin – head coach of the Tampa Catholic baseball team – was looking for something to give his Crusaders players an edge against crosstown rival and traditional powerhouse Jesuit and its ace (and former USA Baseball alumni with the 2010 18U National Team) Lance McCullers Jr.

He found it in his gold medal.

Griffin brought the gold medal with him to the game and after he went over the game plan with his players, he reached in and pulled the medal out. “I told them we’re all going to be connected to this gold and that’s how we’re going to play.” When the medal made its way around the group of players, Griffin – “Coach Ty” to his team – slipped the medal back into his pocket. What the players didn’t know is that their coach had also brought with him a fake medal – a lookalike – that was gold and good enough to fool a group of fired up ballplayers. When Griffin dug back into his pocket, he had the fake medal in hand and looked them in the eye. “I told them a win tonight would mean more to me than the gold medal,” Griffin recalls.

And then he wound up with medal in hand – the one the players thought was the real Olympic medal – and threw it over a nearby fence. A brief second of stunned silence. Then the players jumped to their feet, yelling and screaming and some high-fiving. Griffin’s theatrics had fooled everyone, and his inspired players couldn’t wait to take the field.

“They really bought into it,” the coach says with a chuckle. And it worked. Griffin’s Tampa Catholic team defeated McCullers and Jesuit.

Griffin is a veteran of big games, and as a player with USA Baseball, produced one of the organization’s biggest moments when he slugged a two-out, two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat Cuba in the preliminary round of the 1987 Pan Am Games. The victory was historic as it marked the first loss for Cuba in 20 years of Pan Am play, a streak that had reached an astounding 37 straight wins.

As he strolled to the plate with Central Michigan’s Larry Lamphere on base, Griffin – an All-ACC Conference player at Georgia Tech and the first-round pick of the Chicago Cubs (ninth overall) in the 1989 MLB Draft – caught a glimpse of his parents in the Busch Stadium stands. Cuba’s pitcher figured Griffin would be looking fastball and offered up a curve that just hung, and Griffin slugged his way into USA Baseball history. It was the second home run for the switch-hitting second baseman who had hit one left-handed earlier in the game.

“Just an unbelievable feeling,” he says of rounding the bases after the game-winner. “I just remember a lot of people cheering and waving flags.”

That victory served notice to the rest of the field that the Americans were serious about their baseball. The U.S. did reach the gold medal game before losing, but by reaching the championship game they had qualified for the 1988 Olympics.

“I remember Coach [Ron] Fraser coming in and telling us, ‘Look, our No. 1 goal is to get to the medal game,’” Griffin says. “‘And if we don’t, the United States won’t be represented at the Olympic Games.’ That’s what made the Pan Am Games so important is that we achieved our goal for us, but we also achieved it for the United States.”

The Pan Am experience carried over the next year when the 1988 Olympic Team was compiled. Several of the players from the ’87 Pan Am Team also were on the ’88 Olympic Team. And they knew they were good.

“We got a sense that we had a great team when we came back the next year to train for the Olympics,” Griffin says. “It was a great bunch of guys and we just connected and went out of our way to do things for the other players. We understood it was a team of great players.

“We matured as young people [after Pan Am] but also as ballplayers,” he adds. “We came to Seoul with the thought that this was ours to lose. If we played our game we knew it was ours. It was almost borderline cockiness, but we weren’t cocky in the sense of how we played. But the guys on that team fed off each other so well that there never was a time I didn’t feel we weren’t in the game.”

In addition to coaching high school players, Griffin was an assistant coach with the 2014 USA Baseball 14U National Team Development Program (NTDP). His goal is to coach for the organization in international play. Then maybe he can bring his medal out again.

Remembering… Mike Neill

Every September 27th, Mike Neill dips into a book bag and pulls out a tangible piece of the greatest thrill of his baseball career – an Olympic gold medal.

He’ll place it around his neck for a few moments, and recall all that went into winning gold with the 2000 USA Baseball Olympic Team in Sydney, Australia. Then he takes to texts and phone calls to his former champion teammates.

“I do it every year,” says Neill, now Vice President-Wealth Management and a Financial Advisor/Financial Planning Specialist for Morgan Stanley in Philadelphia, just a long home run from the campus of Villanova, where he starred in college, and – after retiring from pro ball in 2002 – returned to earn his Finance degree. “Being part of that [USA] team... was incredible.” What was incredible was Neill’s sense of timing for that team. His home run in the bottom of the 13th inning beat Japan in the opening round of the Olympics, capping the longest game in Olympic history.

Then there was the home run against arch-rival Cuba in the championship game... but more on that later. For even the United States to get to the Olympics, it was a pinch-single by Neill in the 10th inning that drove in the winning run a year before to lift the U.S. to a 2-1 win over Mexico in the semifinals of the 1999 Pan Am Games. That win qualified the U.S. for the 2000 Olympics.

The inning before that hit, Neill – chilling on the bench – told coach Buddy Bell that “I’m going to be one the bench waiting if you need a good, solid at-bat,” Neill recalls. Bell listened, and told Neill that “I need that now.” “I don’t think Buddy really understood I was just talking [crap],” Neill says with a laugh.

So when the Olympics rolled around – and Neill was chosen as one of a handful of players from that ’99 Pan Am Team to make the Olympic roster – he wasn’t fazed by much. He was a 30-year-old minor league veteran whose brief major league career in 1998 consisted of six games with the Oakland A’s in which he batted .267 over 15 at-bats.

The Olympics offered new life.

Sometimes people find themselves in the right place at the right time. And they take advantage of those situations, which is what Neill did with the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team. Never mind that he felt his swing was getting “a little long” when the Games began, Neill’s 13th-inning home run made the world take notice. Maybe this U.S. team wouldn’t be a pushover. Did he know it was gone when it left the bat? “I did,” Neill says. “Very rarely does that ever happen, but that was one of the few times that I knew it was gone.”

A contentious matchup with Cuba, in which the U.S felt the Cubans had plunked Ernie Young on purpose and believed the Cubans were trying to intimidate the Americas, saw the U.S. lose 6-1. But it would be the only loss they would suffer in the Olympics. But coach Tommy Lasorda kept the team focused, and reminded them of not embarrassing the uniform they were wearing. They reached the semifinals against South Korea, and waited out a slow-moving storm that delayed the game several hours. Once play resumed after midnight – and with hardly anyone left in the stands – Doug Mientkiewicz homered to send the U.S. into the gold medal game against Cuba.

“The semifinal was really overwhelming,” Neill says. “For Doug to hit the home run and get us to the gold medal game was big. It really sort of relaxed us.”

In the championship game, it was Neill who set the tone for the Americans. After the first two batters struck out, Neill drilled a fastball to the opposite field that cleared the fence. As he rounded the bases, he dotted the trot with a couple of fist pumps and plenty to say to the Cubans as he passed them. What did he say? “I was just letting them know we were there to play,” Neill says.

Neill also caught the final out of the game, sliding near the left-field line to come up with the highlight-reel out. That brought a huge celebration as the U.S. players mobbed pitcher Ben Sheets, who shutout the Cubans on just three hits to clinch the only gold medal in U.S. Olympic baseball history.

On the podium, Neill couldn’t help but think of the significance of the team standing alongside him. And when the first notes of the National Anthem were heard, it was all he could do to keep it together. “An indescribable feeling,” he says. “To be part of something like that . . . I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t think about it.”