Baseball

Australia and Olympic Baseball

After Baseball made its official Olympic debut at the Barcelona 1992 Games, Australia was first represented at the 1996 Atlanta Games placing seventh. Four years later at Sydney 2000, they again placed seventh.

The team won its first ever Olympic medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens when they won silver behind the mighty Cubans. Australia advanced into the final match after defeating a Japanese team made up of professional players in the semi-final (1-0). In the final, they went down to Cuba 6-2.

Aussie short stop Glenn Williams was named the 2004 Olympic qualifying tournament's Most Valuable Player.

Olympic History

Baseball became a full medal sport at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, having been a demonstration sport six times (including Melbourne in 1956).

Pesapallo (Finnish baseball) was also demonstrated in Helsinki in 1952. In Barcelona and Atlanta 1996, baseball was only open to amateur players but by Sydney 2000 professionals were permitted to compete. Cuba was the dominant force in Olympic baseball winning the gold in 1992, 1996 and 2004. Australia won its first and only baseball medal so far, a silver, at Athens 2004.

The US broke the dominance when they defeated Cuba in the Sydney final. At the 2008 Beijing Games, Cuba and the US had to settle for silver and bronze respectively with the dominant South Korean team taking gold.

At the International Olympic Committee (IOC) meeting in on 7 July 2005, Baseball and Softball were voted out of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England, becoming the first sports voted out of the Olympics since polo was eliminated from the 1936 Olympics.

In late 2013, the IOC voted to reinstate Wrestling at the Tokyo 2020 Games, defeating the combined baseball-softball bid.

Over a year later in Monaco, the IOC voted and agreed that the Tokyo 2020 organising committee could resurrect baseball and softball onto the Olympic program. In September 2015 the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee announced that along with four other sports, the reintroduction of Softball/Baseball would be recommended to the IOC.

Finally, on the 3rd of August 2016, the IOC approved the return of baseball and softball to the Olympic program for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Baseball, not included amongst the sports competing at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, will once again return to the Olympics in 2028, hosted by Los Angeles.

The Guinness Book of Records states that the baseball game with the largest ever crowd actually took place in Australia. During the 1956 Melbourne Olympics there was an exhibition game between the United States and a group of Australians who had never played together before.

It just so happens that when the game started the Melbourne Cricket Ground was virtually empty.

Yet 114,000 spectators watched the final Australian batter get caught out over two hours later. The history books and the players think it’s irrelevant that they were there to watch the final athletics session of the Games.

Sport Format

Baseball is played between two teams taking turns batting and fielding. The object is to score the most runs in nine innings. Each team's turn at bat ends when three of its batters have been ruled out.

If the score is tied after nine innings, the teams play another inning at a time until one team leads.

At the Olympic Games, each team plays the other seven teams once, and the top four teams advance to the semi-finals. The first-placed team then plays the fourth-placed team, and the second plays the third.

The winners of those semi-finals meet to decide the gold and silver medals, with the two losing teams playing for the bronze.