By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

If you can belt a baseball, sling a softball or wield a mean badminton racket, Greece's Olympic teams might just have a place for you.

Knowledge of Greek, classical or modern, is not necessary. You don't have to have ever set foot in the country or even be able to find it on a map.

Knowing Zorba from Zeus or ouzo from Mt. Olympus is not a requirement. Being able to hit a curveball or dominate at badminton is. That and having at least a smidgen of Greek ancestry.

What in Helles is going on?

Well, with the 2004 Olympics bound for Athens and all that is being put into them, news reports say officials there are under the gun to produce a bunch of medals before the home folks. More gold, silver and bronze than the 13 medals the country's athletes took home from the last Olympiad in Sydney.

So, the welcome mat is out for those of Greek ancestry to help fill out the rosters. Scouts are on the prowl for athletes, especially in many of the non-traditional Olympic sports like baseball, badminton, field hockey, etc.

What's more, officials in Greece say they are trying to make their teams more attractive to foreign nationals by asking parliament to waive a law that, up to this point, has made military service mandatory for Greek males.

Earlier this month a Chicago native threw a no-hitter to help Greece win its European pool B baseball tournament, a step toward Olympic qualification.

There is, of course, nothing technically wrong with any of this. Several countries have been known to have sometimes used some rather elastic and creative rules under which to qualify players for various national teams. One year Mexico looked to players from the U.S., some of whom more than two generations removed from the country, to fill out half of its women's World Cup soccer roster.

Others, including the U. S., have speedily expedited citizenship processes to qualify a promising player who couldn't buy a postcard in their language.

And, if Lower Slobobia wants to go out and scare up an archery team made up of people with some tenuous tie to the old country we would not be too surprised.

But Greece? This is the birthplace of the Games, after all. The origin of the Olympic spirit.

It is a place where, like the Olympic flame itself, you'd like to believe a slightly higher standard might still endure. That the run for the gold wouldn't become as much an everything-goes scramble as the battle for a desirable parking space in Athens.

After 108 years, far too long an absence, the Olympic Games are finally coming back to their home. The hope is that Greece will celebrate the occasion of their return with a strong showing.

And, after whatever medals are won on the host's behalf, the winners will know the words to "Ethnikos Hymnos."