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List of Olympic medalists in baseball


Baseball is a sport formerly contested at the Summer Olympic Games. It was originally played as a demonstration sport in seven Olympics—1912, 1936, 1952, 1956, 1964, 1984, and 1988— more than for any other sport in Olympic history. These exhibitions featured a single game at the first five Olympic appearances and then a tournament format in 1984 and 1988. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) granted baseball official status on October 13, 1986, for the 1992 Summer Olympics. The sport was contested at each subsequent Games through 2008, after which the IOC removed it from the roster of Olympic sports.

In 1992, the first official Olympic baseball tournament was won by the Cuban team. Cuba had boycotted the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, missing the previous exhibition baseball tournaments, but entered in 1992 as the favorite, having won the past 12 world championships and with a 62–1 record in international competitions since 1986. The Cubans went undefeated in the 1992 Olympics and trailed in only one game. They went undefeated again at the 1996 Olympics en route to a second consecutive gold medal. The United States won their first medal (bronze) in the 1996 Olympics and then won gold at the 2000 Summer Olympics. 2000 was the first Olympics in which Cuba lost a game: first to the Dutch team in round-robin play and then again to the Americans in the gold medal game. This was also the first time professional players were allowed to compete in baseball, though Major League Baseball (MLB) did not permit any player on the 40-man roster of an MLB team to compete. In 2004, the reigning gold medalist United States did not qualify for the Olympic tournament, while the Cuban team won its third gold medal.


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