After stepping on second base for the final out, Japan shortstop Hayato Sakamoto felt awash with a new sensation. For so long, Japan had never achieved Olympic glory in a beloved sport.
Leading into the gold medal game Saturday at Yokohama Baseball Stadium, Sakamoto, 32, admitted he felt a lot of pressure. And before that final play, he said he was very nervous. So after securing the final out in a 2-0 win over the United States, Sakamoto jumped up and thrust his arms in the air.
“I felt so relieved,” he said through an interpreter.
The last time baseball was in the Olympics, in 2008 in Beijing, Japan failed to even win a medal.
Baseball was back, only temporarily, because of the host country’s fervent love of the sport. In finally winning the top prize, the Japanese baseball team delivered arguably its signature moment of a trying and unusual Tokyo Olympics, an event postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic and held this summer still amid a state of emergency.
“This Olympic Games is really special because we’re the hosting country and we have the frustration from the Beijing Olympics,” said manager Atsunori Inaba, 49, a former player on that 2008 team. “All of the players really desired gold medals.”
Japan had come close to doing so just once before — in 1996, when it settled for winning the silver medal. It claimed bronze medals in 1992 and 2004. In its sixth trip to the Olympic baseball tournament since 1992, when the sport was first officially played in the Summer Games, top-ranked Japan toppled another baseball power to emerge on top.
Olympic baseball is taken seriously here. The country’s top professional league, Nippon Professional Baseball, paused its season so that its best players could play.
MLB, on the other hand, carried on and didn’t allow players on its 40-man rosters to compete in the Olympics.
Saturday marked the last chance for baseball players across the world to compete on the Olympic stage. Booted from the permanent program after the 2008 Games, Japan restored it for the Tokyo Olympics. But neither baseball nor softball will return for the 2024 Games in Paris. They are widely expected to return in 2028 in Los Angeles.
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