Today marks the first day of what will quickly become a habit: staying out all night, sleeping until 1 pm and barely having enough time to shower, eat and get to the ballpark on time. But I'm not complaining.

I am very tired, not as much as Ariana who's had no sleep whatsoever, but I'm definitely feeling the effects of our early morning adventure. Our vow to keep our secret lasted about as long as it took us to get home. Naturally Ariana told her sister and I whispered our secret to Christina who had accompanied us earlier in the night. But to others we kept our peace; limiting our recounting of the previous night's events to late night drinking with the team. They were playing this evening and with no wins so far, really needed to win tonight to stay in the running for a medal. I couldn't help but feel a bit guilty that perhaps I had contributed a little to the delinquency of a baseball team.

Unfortunately my guilt was not alleviated as the team unfortunately lost again. Well, no wonder when they are out drinking until all hours with women! Actually, I think more to blame is that they weren't actually a 'team' until just before the Olympics began; they had only been practicing together about a month.

One of the players, Vasily, who plays minor league ball in Chicago, had expressed his regret about not winning any games. He remarked how amazed he was that the Greeks were filling the stands to capacity each time they played and felt he really owed them a win. Granted a strong percentage of them were Greek Americans/Canadians/Australians but many still were natives. Though knowing nothing of the sport of baseball they came out to cheer on the 'home team' armed with Greek flags and chants that had become famous during the European football cup of which they had become the surprise champs the previous month. After all if the Greeks could come out of nowhere to be European champions in football then why the hell couldn't they have a chance to win in baseball??

HELLAS! HELLAS! Just like Cubs fans...any action in the game is reason to cheer!

And these Greeks, still riding high from their triumph in soccer, were in fact the best baseball spectators I've ever seen. They wanted so much to understand the game, watching intently, constantly questioning those few of us who understood the game. But perhaps the best part was their the unflagging support of a team that came from so far away to play under the Greek flag. No matter what the team did they jumped up and cheered; hit a pop fly - cheer; make it to base but get tagged out - cheer; hit the batter with an wildly pitched ball - cheer. Ooops. That's when we had to tell people it was bad form to cheer something like that. But for the most part you didn't want to say anything to dampen their enthusiasm; not that I thought it would do much good. It alternately made me smile at their unflagging high spirits and make me tear up at the overwhelming national pride which would have the Greeks sell out a stadium for a sport they didn't play, didn't understand and most likely would never experience again - all to show solidarity with their people - even if most of those people lived an ocean away.

They may not have been fans of the game, but they were truer fans of a team than I'd ever seen...and I'm sorry Chicago...even greater fans than those of my beloved, beleaguered Cubs.

"Lift up the fucking cup because I can't wait for it..." Oh what a lovely ditty to chant...somehow it sounds better when said in Greek...