Head games not appreciated

BEIJING - Davey Johnson hates the format to begin with. But he loathes it more now after seeing one of his players injured, perhaps seriously, as an indirect result.

"The only thing I have to say is that I am not comfortable with the way that game ended," said the skipper of the United States baseball team after his squad lost a 5-4, 11-inning struggle with Cuba yesterday. "They used a trick play called the 'wheel,' and the pitcher threw the ball right at my batter's head. There's no place in baseball for that."

Cuba had scored two runs in the top of the 11th in the wacky new baseball format in which, if teams are deadlocked after 10 innings, each team begins its half of the 11th with men on first and second and nobody out. The managers select any part of the order they like to do this.

Johnson elected to put his ninth and leadoff men on base to bring up No. 2 batter Jayson Nix (who had hit a tying solo homer in the bottom of the eighth), No. 3 batter Terry Tiffee, and cleanup man Matt Brown. But Nix fouled off the second pitch thrown by veteran Cuban righthander Pedro Lazo right into his left eye. Johnson had sent up Nix to bunt, but Johnson maintained that with the ball coming directly at his head, the young man was acting strictly in self-defense when he raised the bat.

Lazo has subsequently denied throwing at Nix, but Johnson wasn't buying it. "He's a smart, veteran pitcher with good control," Johnson declared. "He threw it at his head. No game of baseball is worth that, as far as I'm concerned."

After Brian Barden (subbing for Nix) moved the runners along with a sacrifice, Team USA did get one of the runs back on a sacrifice fly by Tiffee, but Brown fouled out to catcher Ariel Pestano on the first pitch, giving the Cubans the 5-4 victory and putting the Americans in a precarious position with a 1-2 record. That, however, appeared to be of secondary concern to Johnson, who was far more interested in what happened to Nix.

The American second baseman was taken to a nearby hospital. William Kuprevich, the chief medical officer of the US Olympic Team, released a statement saying that "Mr. Nix sustained a laceration to the left upper eyebrow. The injury was evaluated with a CAT scan and a detailed eye exam. The laceration was repaired and he was treated with eye drops and rest. He will not return to play during the Games."

Nix is a 26-year-old (on Aug. 26) in the Colorado Rockies organization. He's a former first-round pick and was the MVP of the 2007 world championships in Chinese Taipei. He was hitting .300 with 17 homers and 49 RBIs when he was plucked from Triple A Colorado Springs for these Olympics.

Until that point it had all been about the baseball and it had been a pretty good game. Cuba got two runs off US starter Trevor Cahill in the first, as the righthander from the Oakland A's organization struggled with his control, not getting ahead in the count until the eighth batter of the inning, after the Cubans had been the beneficiaries of two hits, two walks, a wild pitch, and a hit batsman.

But Cahill battled, and he was able to hand over a 2-2 game to Jeremy Cummings in the sixth. He retired the first seven men before Cuban designated hitter Alfredo Despaigne, who had twice left the bases loaded, launched one over the left-center-field fence to put Cuba up, 3-2, in the eighth. But Nix found a rare misplaced Lazo pitch to his liking and hit a towering tying shot in the home half of the inning.

The Cubans had a great opportunity in the 10th when Alexei Bell hit a leadoff triple on which center fielder Dexter Fowler made a pretty good try for a highlight catch. But reliever Kevin Jepsen hitched up the ol' belt and went to work, striking out the next two men and retiring pinch hitter Yoandry Urguelles on a grounder to extend the game.

There were shades of old-time baseball on the Cuban side as manager Antonio Pacheco got through the 11 innings with just two pitchers. Starter Luis Rodriguez, a side-winding righthander, walked no one and struck out seven during his five-inning stint, the USA hitting nothing but doubles (two blooped and three well-struck). And then came Lazo, who is 35 and pitching on his fourth Olympic baseball team.

He's a big guy, listed at 6 feet 4 inches and 236 pounds. But he doesn't throw all that hard, never reaching 90 and only getting as high as 89 twice. He has a minimalist windup that is reminiscent of the compact delivery Don Larsen employed to pitch that perfect game in the '56 Series (ask your father, grandfather, or Uncle Louie). Lazo is a master of changing speeds, and save for the home run he surrendered to Nix, he stymied the Americans in the sixth. In the seventh. In the eighth. In the ninth. In the 10th. And, yes, in the 11th. Yup, that's six innings of long relief leading to a bona fide save situation. Many thousands of miles away, Tony La Russa must have felt a twinge. I'm going out on that proverbial limb and say you won't be seeing anything like it in major league baseball this season, or any other season.

They lurched into the 11th inning and Johnson knew a long time ago he wasn't going to like this new format. "I found out about it a couple of months ago," he said. "They want to speed the game up. I'm a baseball dinosaur. A baseball purist. I don't like the idea of putting guys on base and then trying to defend them."

Pacheco put his eighth and ninth batters on base. Leadoff man Giorbis Duvergel dropped down a nice bunt to put men on second and third. No. 2 batter Michel Enriquez wasted no time, ripping the first pitch thrown by closer Jeff Stevens on a line past first baseman Tiffee for an opposite-field, two-run single.

That brought the Americans to the fateful bottom of the 11th, and the at-bat neither Jayson Nix nor his manager will ever forget. "That wheel play is designed to get the guy at third," Johnson explained. "But in my wildest imagination I didn't think he'd be throwing at my guy's coconut."

Jayson Nix's Olympic experience is over. He's lucky his career isn't, too.

Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com.