Baseball was a demonstration sport at the Olympics six times: At Stockholm in 1912, Berlin in 1936, Melbourne in 1956, Tokyo in 1964, Los Angeles in 1984, and Seoul in 1988. That's an Olympic record.
It finally became a medal sport in 1992. Because the Olympics conflict with the major league season, American teams have been made up primarily of college players.
Eight teams enter the Olympic tournament. The host nation qualifies automatically, while the other seven teams qualify through regional tournaments. Two are from the Americas, two from Europe, two from Asia, and the seventh is the winner of a playoff game between the top teams from Oceania and Africa.
Olympic competition begins with a round robin tournament. The four teams with the best records then advance to a single-elimination tournament, in which the first-place team faces the fourth-place team and the second- and third-place teams meet in the first round.
The designated hitter is used in Olympic competition. In both the round robin tournament and the medal tournament, if a team leads by 10 runs or more after seven innings, the game ends with that team declared the victor.
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| Year | Gold | Score | Silver | Bronze |
| 1992 | Cuba | 11-1 | Chinese Taipei | Japan 8, USA 3 |
| 1996 | Cuba | 13-9 | Japan | USA 10, Nicaragua 3 |
| 2000 | United States | 4-0 | Cuba | South Korea 3, Japan 1 |
| 2004 | Cuba | 13-7 | Australia | Japan 11, Canada 2 |
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| 1992 |
|---|
| William Adams, Robert Alkire, Darron Dreifort, Anthony Garciaparra, Jason Giambi, Richard Greene, Jeffrey Hammonds, Ricky Helling, Charles Johnson, Daron Kirkreit, Chad McConnell, Calvin Murray, Phillip Nevin, Christopher Roberts, Michael Tucker, Jason Varitek, Ronald Villone, Billy Wallace, Chris Wimmer, Craig Wilson |
| 1996 |
|---|
| J. Chad Allen, Kristin Benson, Robert Dickey, Troy Glaus, Chad Green, Seth Greisinger, Kiplan Harkrider, Andrew Hinch, Jacque Jones, Billy Koch, Mark Kotsay, Matthew LeCroy, Travis Lee, Braden Looper, Brian Loyd, Warren Morris, Octavio Ojeda, Jim Parque, Jeff Weaver, Jason Williams |
| 2000 |
|---|
| Brent Abernathy, Kurk Ainsworth, Pat Borders, Sean Burroughs, John Cotton, Gookie Dawkins, Adam Everett, Ryan Franklin, Chris George, Shane Heams, Marcus Jensen, Mike Kinkade, Rick Krivda, Doug Mientkiewicz, Mike Neill, Roy Oswalt, Jon Rauch, Anthony Sanders, Bobby Seay, Ben Sheets, Brad Wilkerson, Todd Williams, Ernie Young, Tim Young |
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This page last updated Friday, 18-Apr-2008 16:01:00 PDT
http://www.hickoksports.com/history/olbaseball.shtml
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