She had sent him to the back of the line when he'd come for his baseball uniform
"You're not an athlete" she had sneered "you're a coach"
And so he was left with this
Pants too small for a Little Leaguer
The shirt?
"You could have fit two Big Papis inside" Jon Deeble said

Deeble was an Aussie in Athens, coaching a team seemingly as ill fit for the odyssey that lay ahead as the size twenty-six pants and XXXL shirt he'd just been handed

Only four years earlier, in the Sydney Olympics, Australia had held the home-field advantage, and finished next to last

Every Aussie team was assigned a hero during that Olympics to serve as an unofficial mascot and cheerleader
The Aussie baseball team got Peter Brock, the legendary auto racer
"Our Dale (Earnhardt)" Deeble said of Brock, who died last year in a crash
Brock was gung-ho when it started, said he'd take the boys for a spin in his car, but after the Aussies were beaten in their first game, Brock vanished

"Give us Neville Nobody" Deeble had said this this time around
"The lowest-profile guy you got
They gave us Russell Mark
He's a shooter"

Mark was a gold-medal marksman, assigned to one of the great long shots in Olympic history

Americans can have their Miracle on Ice

In 2004, Deeble and his blokes were about to fashion one of the most improbable runs to Olympic glory as any team in any sport ever had, one that would require them to beat Japan twice, including a 1-0 win against Daisuke Matsuzaka, and brought them face to face with mighty Cuba in a Gold Medal game they might have won if not for a terrible umpiring call

Deeble would again come face to face with Matsuzaka, this time while working for the Red Sox
As the director of Pacific Rim scouting, he dogged Matsuzaka for years and laid the groundwork for the Sox' successful quest to acquire the Japanese ace

No one is more zealous than Deeble in his belief that Matsuzaka will be as dominating in the big leagues as he was against the rest of the world
But for one incredible day in Athens, Dice-K, despite striking out fourteen, could not conquer Deeble's Aussies

You know how they say you can know a game just by reading the box score?
When Deeble scans the box score of that game, he compares the names in his lineup with the names of the Japanese
"Gavin Fingleson? He's a personal trainer on Bondi Beach" Deeble said. "He's out there every morning at five o'clock, with corporate types
Brett Roneberg? He's Double A with the Pirates (and a former Red Sox farmhand)
Dave Nilsson? Retired
Glenn Williams? Triple A Twins
Brendan Kingman? He's working in a factory selling shower accessories
Andrew Utting? I think he's unemployed, going back to school, working part time doing some baseball stuff
Thomas Brice? He was released, playing in Taiwan
Paul Gonzalez? He's a sales rep for a company that does wrappers for Coca-Cola
Brett Tamburrino? Low A ball, wasn't working
Rodney Van Buizen? The Dodgers put him on the phantom disabled list
Chris Oxspring? The Padres sold him to the Hanshin Tigers
Jeff Williams? Used to be with the Dodgers, played with Hanshin, signed with the Brewers"

Deeble turned to the Japanese lineup
"Fukudome, a batting champion
Miyamoto, captain of the Yakult Swallows
Takahashi signed a huge deal with the Tokyo Giants
Johjima, with Seattle
Nakamura was with the Dodgers last year
This guy Tani, he's a superstar. We tried to sign him this year, but he wanted to stay in Japan
Ogasawara , a batting champion. He wants to be in the Japanese Hall of Fame. He dominated. One of the two best hitters in Japan, with Fukudome
Wada, the DH, he's a free agent
Daisuke, of course, and Iwase, he's the premier lefthanded reliever in Japan"

Deeble laughed
"That's probably a $200 million payroll" he said
"These guys (the Aussies) - put all their limbs together, and they're probably worth $3.50 a pound"

Deeble played baseball because his father, Don, did
"My dad was a legend of Australian baseball" he said
"I never saw him play in his peak, only when he was in his 40's
People say he could have played in the Major Leagues but that wasn't available at that time
My mother played three sports for Australia - basketball, netball, and softball"

A lefthanded pitcher, Deeble won the first-ever game for Australia in the '88 Olympics v Canada
He also pitched in four World Championships and three Intercontinental Cups

When Australia started a pro league in the 1990's, Deeble played first base, pitched, and managed the Melbourne Monarchs, who also placed him in charge of marketing

He came across the pond after being scooped up by the Florida Marlins, first as a scout, then as manager of their Gulf Coast League rookie team
Lowell Spinners fans remember him as manager of the 2003 short-season club
He'll be back in the same capacity this season, which is good news for the local Outback Steakhouse
Deeble promised they could use his voice when people call to make reservations

Quiet confidence

No one took Deeble or the Aussies seriously when they arrived in Athens, even less so after they lost their first two games, to Cuba and Taiwan
Chien-Ming Wang, now with the Yankees, beat them in the second game

Deeble couldn't get a proper-fitting uniform

His 6-foot-7-inch reliever, Graeme Lloyd, and 6-3 catcher, Nilsson, slept on beds that were too short
"Other guys got bed extensions" Deeble said
"Not our guys"

But it was Lloyd, the former Yankee, who spoke up when it appeared the Aussies were headed toward another debacle
"The bus was pretty quiet" Deeble recalls "and Lloyd says, 'You know what, guys? This reminds me of the World Series of '96 when we were down, 0-2, against the Braves and we came back to win
This is a great team
Keep doing what we're doing
Keep executing'
And it really picked the guys up"

Craig Shipley was the first Aussie to play in the big leagues, making it with the Dodgers in 1986
He and Deeble are extremely close - together, they tracked Matsuzaka as a prelude to his signing with the Red Sox
"The biggest thing was Deebs creating a winning environment" said Shipley, the Sox' vice president of professional and international scouting
"When you grew up here, it was, 'Cuba, we can't beat Cuba. Japan? No way we can beat them'
But Deebs knew these teams
He said, 'They're not that good. Don't worry about the aura. If you execute, we can beat these guys'"

The Aussies reeled off wins
Oxspring helped to hold the Italians to one hit, and the bats awoke against Japan, the Aussies scoring six runs late in a 9-4 win
Another win followed against Greece, and when they routed the Netherlands, 22-2 , they were in the Medal Round, with Dice-K looming

Matsuzaka was sensational
"I remember the guys walking back to the dugout, saying they couldn't touch him" Deeble said "including Nilsson"
The Aussies did not have a hit until the fifth
But in the sixth, Roneberg grounded a single to left, and Nilsson worked a 10-pitch walk off Matsuzaka
That brought up Kingman - "Big, fat, huge" Deeble said "but talented
I don't know what he hit, maybe a splitter, but he hit it over the second baseman's head"
The Aussies had a run
The Japanese, who came into the game with a team batting average of .329, put two runners on in the seventh
Deeble brought in Williams to face Atsushi Fujimoto, his Hanshin teammate
"I was shaking like a leaf" Williams said
Fujimoto popped to third, Williams threw two more shutout innings, and the Aussies were in the title game

In the interview room after the game, Matsuzaka was there, and so were dozens of Japanese reporters
But there were no reporters from Australia, Deeble said

Little fanfare at home

They came for the Gold Medal game, the one in which Deeble once again had trouble being outfitted for the game
The Aussies had two home white jerseys apiece - on the eve of the last game, they each passed one around to be autographed
Deeble passed his around, then was mortified to discover that his pitching coach, Phil Dale, mistakenly was passing around his other jersey, believing it was his
"He tried to cover the signatures with tape" he said
For the Gold Medal game, Deeble wore a warm-up jersey with the sleeves cut off
"And it was about 140 degrees" he said

Former Pawtucket righthander John Stephens got the start for the Aussies, who were robbed of a game-tying two-run double when a ball that caromed off the wall was ruled a catch
Deeble came racing out of the dugout to argue
He was tossed by the umpire, before he'd even said a word
"He said I rolled my eyes at him" said Deeble, who believed the umpire, a Dominican, was intimidated by the Cubans
"It wasn't corrupt, but it was as close as you can get
But I was the first coach ever to get tossed"

In the clubhouse, where he couldn't even see the game, Deeble spotted a volunteer
He traded caps, put on a warm-up jacket, and slipped back into the dugout
His presence didn't help - the Aussies fell, 6-2

Still, there was elation, and the Medal Ceremony --- until one more indignity for the coach
"No medals for the coaches" he said incredulously
"We coaches sat in the dugout, until the boys called us out for a photo"

Ahead, though, was the hero's welcome home --- except there was none
"I didn't do a single interview" Deeble said

It was a much bigger story in Japan
A Japanese TV network sent a crew to Deeble's house
For hours, he said, they asked him if he could explain how the Aussies could have beaten the Japanese not once, but twice
Finally, Deeble gave them a story - He had a pilot friend in the States who'd taken his team up 8,000 feet and had them all parachute out of the plane. How could they be intimidated by the Olympics?
None of it was true, but it ended up on the air

When he went to Japan the following spring, he had lunch with Sadaharu Oh, the legendary slugger
"The first thing he asked me" Deeble said "was how did we do it?"

At the end of the year, the Herald-Sun, the biggest paper in the country, counted down the top twenty sports stories of the year, starting with No20, over a week's time
Twenty, 15, 10, 5, 2 --- still no Aussie baseball
"I couldn't believe it" Deeble said
"We were going to be No1
I got up the next morning, opened the paper, and the No1 story of the year was --- the Red Sox winning the World Series"