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There will be a former Bruin playing baseball in Athens, Greece, even though the United States did not qualify for the 2004 Olympic Games. Nick Theodorou, who played at UCLA from 1995 to 1998, will play for the Greek national team this August. Theodorou, like most every other player on the Greek team, is an American citizen and qualified to play for Greece because he has a close relative of Greek descent. Only two players on Greece’s 24-man roster are from the country – the rest are from the United States and Canada. In his senior year at UCLA he hit .337 with two home runs and 15 runs batted in. Theodorou currently plays for the L.A. Dodgers Triple-A team, the Las Vegas 51s, where he was named to the Pacific Coast League All-Star team earlier this month. With the Olympics on the horizon, Theodorou will be making the trip across the Atlantic in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, the rest of his team is facing a monumental obstacle: It can’t get to Greece. It was reported by The Associated Press on Friday that the Greek Olympic baseball team is so short on funds that it has no money to return for the Olympics after training in the United States. “At this moment we do not have money to pay for the tickets for our team to come to participate in the Olympic Games,” Panos Mitsiopoulos, president of the Greek Baseball Federation, told the AP.

SAVAGE PICKS UP ANOTHER RECRUIT: UCLA baseball coach John Savage has picked up a commitment from All-Inland Empire catcher Ryan Babineau, according to the Los Angeles Times. Babineau went to Etiwanda High School in Rancho Cucamonga.

SERRANO TAKES OVER AT UC IRVINE: The search for Savage’s replacement at UC Irvine ended last week when the school hired Cal State Fullerton assistant coach Dave Serrano, the pitching coach for the Fullerton team that won the College World Series this year.

BRUINS IN THE MINORS: Seven of the eight Bruins taken in the 2004 MLB Draft are playing regularly for minor league teams along with Preston Griffin, who was signed as a free agent after the draft. In his last start, Wes Whisler threw a complete game three-hitter for the Kannapolis Intimidators (Class-A, Chicago White Sox). He is one of the team’s top pitchers and also shares time as the designated hitter for the first-place team in the South Atlantic League. Last week Griffin was promoted to the Chicago Cubs’ short-season Class-A team, the Boise Hawks. He hit .429 as a rookie for the Mesa Cubs. Pitcher Casey Janssen has become the ace for the Auburn Doubledays (Class-A, Toronto Blue Jays), pitching them to the best record in the New York-Penn League. Another Bruin doing well is Matt Thayer of the Eugene Emeralds (Class-A, San Diego Padres), who is hitting .323 for the season.