Baseball at the Summer Olympics | |
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Governing body | IBAF |
Events | 1 (men) |
Games | |
Note: demonstration sport years indicated in italics | |
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Baseball at the Summer Olympics unofficially debuted at the 1904 Summer Games, and became an official Olympic sport at the 1992 Summer Olympics. The event was last played in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing with South Korea taking the gold. In 2016 it was confirmed that Baseball would return for the 2020 games in Tokyo. Olympic baseball is governed by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF).
Although little was recorded, Olympic baseball first appeared at the 1904 St. Louis games. Eight years later in 1912 in Stockholm, a United States team played against host Sweden, winning 13–3. Baseball was also played at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, the American team beating the French team (the local Ranelagh Club) 5–0 in a four inning exhibition game. In 1936 in Berlin, two United States teams played each other before approximately 90,000–100,000 spectators at the Reichsportsfeld. The 1952 Helsinki event was a modified form of the sport, Finnish baseball, played by two Finnish teams. Australia played a one-game exhibition against the United States in 1956 Melbourne and Japan did the same in 1964 in Tokyo. With a crowd of nearly 114,000 spectators, this game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground held the record for the highest attended exhibition baseball game ever until a 2008 American game in Los Angeles.