KRIEGER: Fowler goes from pressing to impressing

By Dave Krieger, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 19, 2008 at 2:37 p.m.

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If baseball is to follow motorboating, golf, tug of war and live pigeon shooting into Olympic extinction, Dexter Fowler did not want to remember it this way.

Team USA manager Davey Johnson installed the Rockies' prized center-field prospect at the top of his batting order in the second game of the Olympic tournament. Fowler, hitting .337 for Double-A Tulsa, promptly turned into the most famous overswinger in baseball movie history.

"My nickname for him has been Willie Mays Hayes," said starting pitcher Brandon Knight, referring to the immortal Wesley Snipes character in Major League. "He's been popping everything up. His swing hasn't been quite there."

In three games as Team USA's leadoff hitter, Fowler went 1-for-14 and earned a spot on the bench for Monday's blowout of China. When Matt LaPorta was hit in the head by a pitch as the game turned ugly late, Fowler was called on to pinch run. In a single at-bat, he delivered a double and turned his tournament around.

Tuesday night against Taiwan - known in this tournament as Chinese Taipei at the insistence of the host country - Johnson thought he'd take some pressure off the 22-year-old switch-hitter by dropping him in the order.

Batting ninth and from the left side, Fowler rapped an inside fastball from Taiwan starter Wen-Hsiung Hsu back up the middle for a second-inning single, then rocked a middle-in fastball off the right-center-field fence for a leadoff triple in the fifth. Moments later, he scored the Americans' first run in a 4-2 victory that improved their record to 4-2 and earned them a place in the medal round.

Batting in the sixth with a runner on second and one out, Fowler sliced an inside pitch down the left-field line for an RBI double.

"It probably was a ball, but I tried to keep my hands inside of it," he said.

In his final at-bat, needing only a home run for the cycle, Willie Mays Hayes might have reappeared. Instead, Fowler worked former Rockies pitcher Chin-hui Tsao to a 3-2 count, wasted a 90-mph fastball and drew a walk.

His final line was 3-for-3, with a run scored and an RBI. His tournament average jumped from .133 to .278.

"I think I was pressing a little bit," said the easygoing Atlanta native. "Went out today and told myself, 'Go out and have fun.' "

"The hit he got (Monday) got him feeling pretty good about himself, and he basically helped us win (Tuesday's) ballgame with the way he swung the bat," Johnson said.

Considering the way the Rockies' season has gone, placing three players on the Olympic team - more than any other organization - might be the high point. Casey Weathers, their first-round draft pick a year ago, has pitched two scoreless innings, giving up one hit and striking out four.

"He's quieted things down, his command's been good, his slider's been good," said Rockies special assistant Marcel Lachemann, a coach on Johnson's staff here.

The Rocks' third member of the team, second baseman Jayson Nix, was struck in the eye by a ball he tried to bunt in a wrenching loss to Cuba, a team the Americans might meet again in the medal round. Nix hopes to make it back in time for that.

"If you know Jayson, unless a bone's sticking out, he'll be there," Lachemann said.

By vote of the International Olympic Committee, there will be no baseball at the 2012 Games in London, and there seems little groundswell to bring it back thereafter. It has been in precisely as many Olympics as the rope climb (four), two fewer than tug of war and three more than live pigeon shooting.

Softball will be discontinued in 2012 as well, but its chances of reinstatement seem much better than baseball's. Softball is growing as a worldwide women's sport, and the Olympics represent the game's biggest tournament. This is the role the Olympics likes to play.

By contrast, the Olympic tournament plays a minor role in baseball. The World Baseball Classic has become the big international event on the baseball calendar.

While the American softball team is actively campaigning for reinstatement of its sport, members of the baseball team are generally minor leaguers who place a higher priority on getting noticed and promoted by their parent clubs.

Still, if this is to be the last Olympic baseball tournament, Team USA and its three Rocks would like to make it one to remember.

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