Baseball
Japan's victory in the 2007 Asian Baseball Championship qualified the Japan national baseball team for Olympic competition. Japan, along with Cuba, has appeared in every Olympic baseball tournament since the sport was elevated to official status. Japan has reached the semifinals each year and taken one silver and two bronze medals, but has yet to win the Olympic championship.
- Roster
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Pitchers:
Catchers:
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Infielders:
Outfielders:
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Group stage
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Group table
| Team | G | W | L | RS | RA | WIN% | GB | Tiebreaker |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Korea | 7 | 7 | 0 | 41 | 22 | 1.000 | - | - |
| Cuba | 7 | 6 | 1 | 52 | 23 | .857 | 1 | - |
| United States | 7 | 5 | 2 | 40 | 22 | .714 | 2 | - |
| Japan | 7 | 4 | 3 | 30 | 14 | .571 | 3 | - |
| Chinese Taipei | 7 | 2 | 5 | 29 | 33 | .286 | 5 | 1-0 |
| Canada | 7 | 2 | 5 | 29 | 20 | .286 | 5 | 0-1 |
| Netherlands | 7 | 1 | 6 | 9 | 50 | .143 | 6 | 1-0 |
| China | 7 | 1 | 6 | 14 | 60 | .143 | 6 | 0-1 |
Semifinal
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 6 | 2 | |||||||||||
| South Korea | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 | X | 6 | 10 | 1 | |||||||||||
| WP: Kwang-Hyun Kim (1-0) LP: Hitoki Iwase (0-3) Home runs: JPN: None KOR: Seung-Yeop Lee (1) |
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Bronze medal game
| Team | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japan | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 6 | 1 | |||||||||||
| United States | 0 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | X | 8 | 9 | 0 | |||||||||||
| WP: Brett Anderson (1-0) LP: Kenshin Kawakami (0-1) Home runs: JPN: Masahiro Araki (1), Norichika Aoki (1) USA: Matt LaPorta (2), Matt Brown (2), Jason Donald (1) |
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Read more about this topic: Japan At The 2008 Summer Olympics
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)
“The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health—congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.”
—Calvin Trillin (b. 1935)