One of the big baseball stories of 2004 was the winning of the silver medal in the Athens Olympics by Australia, which upset a highly rated Japanese team twice during the Summer Games. The 1-0 and 9-4 victories by the Aussies stunned Japan, which had to settle for bronze, and it also raised the excitement level of the game Down Under to new heights.
Managing the Australian team in Greece was Melbourne native Jon Deeble, a life-long baseball player and coach who also wears another hat as the Pacific Rim Scouting Coordinator for the 2004 World Series champion Boston Red Sox. It was in that capacity that Deeble recently made one of his frequent trips to Japan, where he talked about his life in the game and that surprising performance in the Olympics.
Deeble, 42, played on the Australian National Team for 16 years as a left-handed pitcher, appearing in five World Championships and the 1988 Seoul Olympics.