Aug 4, 2008 By Christian Science Monitor - Special to the Times
Former Ohio State softball coach Michael Bastian, center, joined the coaching staff of the Chinese National Softball Team in 2005. Since then, his loyalty has been questioned.
Conjure up an image of a typical softball coach and it likely resembles Michael Bastian: a bear of a man at 6 foot 2, with Popeye forearms, a respectable paunch, and the earnest manner of a red-blooded Midwesterner.
The Midwestern part might be a stretch, as the former Ohio State coach actually hails from Sacramento. But it's all the same to the Chinese women in his dugout - as long as he brings along that coveted American expertise, and leaves his allegiance to his home country at the border.
In 2005, his first year on the coaching staff of the Chinese National Softball Team, "I'd be asked questions all the time about my loyalty to USA Softball and who I was working for," Bastian said. "'Don't think of me as a foreign coach,' I'd tell them. 'I'm a Chinese coach.' I even learned how to whistle and sing the Chinese national anthem to gain their trust."
For the most part, Bastian's played the brash American to the hilt fighting with umpires and staring down opposing teams in decidedly un-Chinese behavior. Bastian recalled one of the first times he faced the Japanese team as a member of China's coaching staff. Before the game, the Japanese players lined up on the foul line right in front of the Chinese dugout and started taunting his team.
"They had these chants that were meant to intimidate," Bastian said, "that roughly translated to, 'We're aggressive, we're in control, we are the leader.' I walked out onto the field and laughed, and looked atone of the Japanese girls, like, 'What does that mean? That doesn't scare me.' The Chinese leaders were embarrassed because I wasn't 'acting Chinese' … but in reality, they all loved it, because I was fighting for them."
Bastian is part of a major push by the Chinese to win as many gold medals as they can at this year's Olympic host. In hopes of coming out on top, the isolated country has swallowed its nationalist pride and brought in outside talent wherever needed. For the most part, the reception has been warm; like a spurned lover, it's the country left behind that feels hurt.
"When I joined up with China," Bastian said, "a USA Softball leader told me, 'Michael, you will never be allowed to coach a USA national team in the future.' I was blackballed. People called me a traitor."
What hurt most for Bastian was the wedge it put between him and the American women he had coached for so many years. Bastian recalls of one player, "I'd trained her for eight, 10 years. I'm a part of her family, and she was like, 'You gotta understand that you're the enemy now.'"
With China ranked 4th in the world, there's a decent chance the Olympics will pit Bastian directly against the U.S. And as to where his loyalties would lie? The best word he can use to describe his feelings is "conflicted": "It's a very interesting feeling, because I'm a proud American, I love America, I love USA Softball, but - "
That "but" is the fact that the group that suffers most from America's hoarding of coaching talent could be the sport itself: The International Olympic Committee has voted softball and baseball out of future Olympics, finding them too exclusively American for the world stage.
"This is the reason I'm doing what I'm doing," Bastian claimed.
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