The Test Event! In preparation for the Olympics, Robert Derksen, along with the insight of Mike Riskas, put together 12 players from the U.S. and selected an additional 12 players who played on one of the Greek baseball teams to play for Greece in the Olympic test event, which was held at the Olympic Baseball Stadium from March 24th to March 28th. Three other national teams were invited to participate in this event. They were Russia, Sweden, and the Czech Republic. In the first game, Peter Maestrales was the first batter to come to the plate and he hit the very first pitch over the right field fence for a homerun! This was a great way to start the game and the tournament. But, Greece lost that first game by a score of 9 � 6. Greece bounced back the next day and easily defeated Sweden by a score of 16 � 6. In both of these games, the starting line-ups consisted of players from the U.S. and Rob made a few substitutions as the games progressed with players from the Greek league. The next game was against the Czech Republic and for this game Rob decided to field an almost entirely �Greek � League� team. The result was to be expected. The Czech team destroyed Greece by an extremely lopsided score of 22 � 3. The score would have been worse if the Czech team hadn�t taken out all of its first string players and used their bench warmers by the 4th inning. On the following day the Greek team faced the Czech team in the semi-final game. For this game, the Greek-League players stayed on the bench and the Greek team thus defeated the Czech team by a score of 11 � 9. In the final against Russia, the Greek team easily took the Gold Medal with a 5 � 1 victory. The Greek-League players who were on the team were: Christopher Robinson Spartakos Glyfadas Vasilis Arvanitis Spartakos Glyfadas Panagiotis Cheilakis Spartakos Glyfadas Kyriakos Kourtzoglou Spartakos Glyfadas George Lebessis Marousi 2004 Ioannis Apostolopoulos Marousi 2004 Evagelos Papaevangeliou Marousi 2004 Ioannis Pennas Marousi 2004 Dimitris Douros Marousi 2004 Chris Testempasis Aris Angelos Koumpounis Pelopas Patron Panagiotis Raptis Olympiada Peristeriou The Players who came over from the U.S. were: Stephen Palos Cory Harris Peter Maestrales Theodore (Ted) Demetral Peter Dallas Andrew J. Brack Constantine (Gus) Panagotacos Gregory Spanos Chris Youngberg Chris Van Rossum Kevin Cheppenko
