Japan finally secured the medal it wanted most at its home Games as the baseball team beat the U.S., 2-0, to take Olympic gold
TOKYO—The idea of the U.S. ever being a baseball underdog is about as far-fetched as an American mistaking baseball for cricket.
But the Olympics have an uncanny ability to create strange parallel realities. And in the one that happened to center on Yokohama Stadium on Saturday night, in the gold medal game between the U.S. and Japan, an American baseball team was just a plucky upstart. That’s because Japan’s squad brought together the top talent of Nippon Professional Baseball, seasoned pros whose sole objective was to deliver the host nation a signature moment on the penultimate night of the Olympics. The U.S., meanwhile, cobbled together a ragtag group of young minor leaguers and veterans long past their prime.
So the most surprising part of the night wasn’t when Japan clinched its first Olympic baseball gold. It was that the U.S. even kept it close. The home team held for a tense 2-0 victory that saw the Americans fail to bring around any of its nine baserunners on the night. The U.S. defeat means that the home of baseball still has just one gold medal from six appearances at the Games. Japan’s success, meanwhile, is a milestone achievement in a country that’s so obsessed with the game that it returned to the Olympic program. It also capped a challenging and unpopular Games for the hosts with the one medal it wanted most.
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