Olson Calls Game, Then He Columns It

ATLANTA —  In any year when Queen Elizabeth attends a Baltimore Oriole baseball game, Fidel Castro does the Wave at a basketball game and Henry Kissinger substitutes for weatherman Willard Scott on a network television show, there is nothing particularly peculiar about the sight of former First Couple Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter doing the “tomahawk chop”--along with Jane Fonda, Ted Turner and Hammer--from the box seats of a sold-out ballpark in Atlanta.

Likewise, there seems nothing unusually weird about the vision of an dirt-smudged Atlanta Brave sashaying around the dressing room after a playoff game wearing a T-shirt bearing the illustrated likeness and autograph of a Minnesota Twin, or admitting that his principal motive for praying to be playing the Twins in the upcoming World Series is because he is eager to get to Minnesota in time for pheasant-hunting season.

Greg Olson isn’t quite as interested in going after blue jays.

For the time being, here in the ecstatically happy hunting ground of Fulton County, Ga., every day gets wilder and wackier in every way for the sandy-haired, smiley-faced catcher of the Braves, who, having homered and stolen a base in Saturday’s 10-3 pounding of the Pittsburgh Pirates, keeps grinning through his mask and pinching himself and wondering when he is going to wake up.

Sometimes, Oly even wonders where he will wake up. When he and his wife, Lisa, landed at the Atlanta airport after Thursday night’s flight from Pittsburgh, they realized it was already 3:30 a.m., and the in-laws who were baby-sitting their son Ryan were sound asleep. Not wishing to disturb anybody in their own home, the Olsons stopped off in a $39.95 Red Roof Inn and spent the night.

In this day and age of Fortune 400 ballplayers, it is refreshing to find a minimum-wager who knows the value of a buck. These are values the Olsons developed out of necessity while Greg was spending the better part of seven years knocking around Lynchburg, Jackson, Tidewater, Portland, Richmond and other Greyhound hubs or motel hells along the route of baseball’s minor leagues, a Crash Davis kind of catcher, waiting for somebody just once to invite him to the world of chartered jets and top-floor suites.

Now that it has happened, this 31-year-old retread has become the personification of the emergence of the Atlanta Braves themselves, arriving out of nowhere, terrified of nothing, having too much fun at play to think of any of this as work. Money? Sure, he could use more money. Who couldn’t? For now, though, shoot, Oly will be happy to take the hundred bucks he makes guest-writing a daily diary for an Atlanta newspaper.

“Sorry, can’t talk to you no more,” Oly declared, after talking for, oh, about an hour. “Read me tomorrow in the Journal.”

“Yeah, save it, Oly!” called out pitcher Charlie Leibrandt, whom Olson will be catching today. “Remember, you’ve got a column to write!”

Should he do one on himself, it will make quite a story. Olson even delivered an exclusive Saturday morning, scooping all the other journalists covering the playoffs by revealing that his own sore knee would be examined by a doctor. Olson arose Saturday--from his own bed this time--said good morning to the half dozen relatives staying with him, read himself in the paper, kissed Lisa goodby to celebrate their sixth anniversary and took off to see a specialist, whose MRI exam searched for a reason why Oly keeps awaking every other morning with a stiff knee.

Partially it is because Atlanta has been in such short supply of catchers that Olson--who had two major league at-bats before 1990--has been out there laboring like Lou Gehrig. During one stretch from Sept. 1 through Oct. 5, he caught all but two innings. After a lifetime of minor leaguing, though, there is no such thing to Oly as too much work.

“I got tired, but I didn’t get tired of catching. Does that make sense?” Olson asked. “Like, they’d tell me: ‘Get the pitcher through the game. We don’t care about anything else.’ Well, I care. They don’t, but I do. I don’t want to be an automatic out. I want to hit. I want to bang one out once in a while.”

As he did Saturday, homering to left field, which thrilled Olson almost as much as the stolen base he contributed later. Since his pitcher, John Smoltz, had stolen one, Olson felt anybody could. He ran the bases clutching a batting glove in each hand, a happy-go-lucky character out of Edina, Minn., just glad to be here, just glad to be anywhere.

“I went one for two when (the Twins) called me up in 1989, when I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be back. You want to hear the details? I remember everything. We’re playing the Angels at our place and they’ve got their stopper, what’s his name, Harvey? Bryan Harvey. He’s out there, I hit one off him and I miss a home run by six inches, man. Goes over Chili Davis off the Plexiglass, but Chili grabs it bare-handed and gets it back to the infield and I’m ashamed to say I get a single.”

When you don’t hit many, you remember the ones you do. After clearing the fence Saturday, Olson, wearing his Kirby Puckett T-shirt, said: “I’m running thinking: ‘Get outta here! Come on! Get outta here! One for Oly!’ You do something like that, I’m telling you, you hardly feel your feet touching the ground. I don’t even remember touching third base.”

From a nearby locker, Pat Corrales, a coach, says: “Geez, Oly. Enough, Oly. Give it a rest, Oly.”

But Oly goes on.

“Usually I’m not even playing baseball now. Usually by now I’m out pheasant hunting. This is the first time I haven’t made the Minnesota pheasant opener. My best buddy is taking my dog, Jackson, with him.”

And Corrales mutters: “Oly, Oly, Oly. Give it a rest, Oly.”

And Leibrandt calls over: “Save some, Oly. Save some. You gotta write!”

And from across the room, someone else yells: “Hey, Oly! Take tomorrow off. I’ll catch tomorrow.”

And Oly calls back: “Go ahead. Charlie’s pitching. Anybody can catch Charlie.”

And Leibrandt says: “Save some, Oly.”

And Oly says: “He’s right. Charlie’s right. I’m going 0 for four tomorrow on purpose. Then nobody will talk to me and I’ll have all my best quotes to myself.”