Blaine Newnham / Times associate editor
Blackley's major move means no Olympics

JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES Travis Blackley, right, says, "I dreamed of playing in the Olympics, but my highest goal has always been to play in the major leagues. I just didn't think it would happen this fast."

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Maybe if Travis Blackley struggles badly in his start tomorrow night in Toronto, and then again in his next one, he will be sent back to the minor leagues.

And be able to realize his most realistic goal for this year: playing in the Olympic Games.

"I think I would have been the starter in our first game in the Olympics against Cuba," Blackley said.

With five weeks to go before the Games in Athens, Greece, Australia may be fretting, but Blackley can't afford to be.

"I dreamed of playing in the Olympics," he said, "but my highest goal has always been to play in the major leagues. I just didn't think it would happen this fast."

Minor-leaguers are generally allowed to compete in the Olympics; major-leaguers aren't. In 2000, Ryan Franklin, then a Mariners minor-leaguer, helped the United States win the gold medal.

But Blackley is no minor-leaguer. All he had to do was look around to know he wasn't in Tacoma anymore. And, hopefully, wouldn't spend August in Athens.

"I tell my friends, 'Imagine the very best hotel in Melbourne, and then you might be close to imagining where we're staying,' " he said from St. Louis. "I've got a room that is big enough to sleep eight. Not needed, but great.

"Man, in the minor leagues, I'm used to shacking up with another bloke. For a baseball player, this is it."

Blackley is an irrepressible Australian — I'm not sure I've ever met a repressible Aussie — who is watching life fly at him, promoted to the major leagues at age 21, winning his first outing, starting his second game tomorrow in Toronto.

"I still can't believe it," he said. "The clubhouse is bigger than my house, and I have a leather swivel chair that actually works."

Blackley signed with the Mariners when he was 17. He didn't start playing baseball until he was 12, a guest of his younger brother at "Bring a Friend to T-Ball Day."

"I was too old for T-ball," he said, "so I played baseball."

It seemed a strange choice in Melbourne, what with Australian Rules football, rugby and cricket the big team games, and with so much interest in the individual sports of swimming, tennis and golf.

"If you didn't play cricket or football, you weren't in the cool crowd," Blackley said. "But then, when I began to pitch for our national teams, I think people understood."

Still, baseball remains for most athletes an offseason conditioner for cricket.

Blackley said the first game he remembers watching on television was Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, in which Joe Carter's home run gave the Toronto Blue Jays the championship. Blackley's catcher last Thursday in his major-league debut was Pat Borders, who played for Toronto in that game.

"Pat was drafted the year I was born (1982)," Blackley said.

There are two other Australians in the Mariners' system, outfielder Chris Snelling and pitcher Craig Anderson. They all play with abandon.

"I played baseball in Australia," said Bryan Price, the Mariners' pitching coach, "and it seemed unacceptable to the Aussies to have a non-competitive spirit.

"They weren't going to waste the day just playing. They wanted to win."

Baseball has grown in popularity in Australia, although it is surpassed by basketball. Blackley knows of Storm star Lauren Jackson but hasn't met her.

"The No. 1 thing in Australia is sport," Blackley said. "We're competitive. We're a country of 20 million people that relishes being an underdog."

Jackson posed for a magazine shoot of the country's top Olympic athletes in various states of naturalness. The magazine, Black+White, is gracefully done and, as a body of work, is far less titillating than the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

As a fun-loving Aussie, Blackley saw nothing wrong with the shoot or those who participated in it.

"You've got to be buff to do that," he said, "and I can tell you that's not me. It's not something I'd normally do. But who knows, if the price is right?"

Blackley can't imagine an Olympic baseball competition without the United States.

"We played Guam in our first game and they forfeited," he said of the qualifying. "Then we beat South Africa. The Americans were undefeated until they lost their last game.

"The qualifying needs to be changed."

Australia dotes on the Olympics. Blackley could have assured himself a spot in the next Black+White issue on the Olympics with an appearance in these Games.

"Maybe it will happen for me in four years, or eight years, or 12 years," he said. "There will be other chances."

But no chance like there is right now.

Blaine Newnham: 206-464-2364 or bnewnham@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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