Baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...

was featured at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

, for the first time since the 2008 Summer Olympics. Six national teams competed in the tournament:

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

, Japan (host),

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South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, and the

Dominican Republic The Dominican Republic ( ; es, República Dominicana, ) is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean region. It occupies the eastern five-eighths of the island, which it shares with ...

. Baseball/softball was one of five sports that were added to the programme of the 2020 Summer Olympics only. It will not return in 2024. The tournament was originally scheduled to be held in 2020, but on 24 March 2020, the Olympics were postponed to 2021 due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

. As a result, the games were played behind closed doors.

Medalists

Qualification

Six national teams qualified for the Olympic baseball tournament. Japan automatically qualified, as the host nation.

qualified by winning the September 2019 Europe/Africa continental tournament. Two teams qualified through the

2019 WBSC Premier12 The 2019 WBSC Premier12 was an international baseball championship featuring the 12 highest-ranked national teams in the world, held by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC). It was the second WBSC Premier12 event. The championship ...

tournament in November 2019.

qualified as the best-placed team from the Asia/Oceania region (other than Japan, which already qualified as host), while

qualified as the best-placed team from the Americas. The

qualified by winning the Americas Qualifying Event that was originally scheduled to take place in March 2020, but was postponed to May/June 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The final spot was awarded to the

which won a world Final Qualifying Tournament in late June 2021.

Competition schedule

Team squads

Competition format

The small number of teams in the tournament resulted in an unusual competition format being adopted that featured 16 games. There was an opening group round-robin round, and a modified

double-elimination A double-elimination tournament is a type of elimination tournament competition in which a participant ceases to be eligible to win the tournament's championship upon having lost ''two'' games or matches. It stands in contrast to a single-elimina ...

bracket. For the group round, there were two pools of three teams each. Each team played the other two teams in its pool once. A total of six games were played in the group round. In the knockout round, the first three games featured teams that each finished in the same position in their respective pools (A1 vs B1, A2 vs B2, A3 vs B3). The loser of the A3 vs. B3 game was eliminated (with only one loss in the elimination round, plus one or two in the group stage). After this, play continued in double-elimination format until there is one team left in each of the winners and losers brackets. Those two teams played in the gold medal game (a single game; the losers bracket representative does not need to beat the winners bracket representative twice). The last two teams eliminated from the losers bracket played in the bronze medal game. In total, 10 games are played in the knockout round: # A3 vs B3 (loser eliminated) # A2 vs B2 # Winner of #1 vs Winner of #2 # A1 vs B1 # Loser of #2 vs Loser of #3 (loser eliminated) # Loser of #4 vs Winner of #5 (loser to bronze medal game) # Winner of #3 vs Winner of #4 (winner to gold medal game) # Loser of #7 vs Winner of #6 (winner to gold medal game, loser to bronze medal game) # Bronze medal game: Loser of #6 vs Loser of #8 # Gold medal game: Winner of #7 vs. Winner of #8 Thus, the best two teams from group play face each other in the quarterfinals, with a possible rematch later in the tournament (including the gold medal game, if the winner also wins its next game and the loser wins its next two).

Group stage

The schedule was announced on 28 June 2021. Note that "Qualification" column represents positional seeding in the knockout stage, effective at the conclusion of the group stage. ''All times are local (

UTC+9 UTC+09:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +09:00. During the Japanese occupations of British Borneo, Burma, Hong Kong, Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Philippines, Singapore, and French Indochina, it was used as a common time with ...

).''

Group A

Group B

Knockout stage

Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Round 1 repechage

Round 2 repechage

Semifinals

Bronze medal game

Gold medal game

Final standings

All-Olympic team

Selected by the

World Baseball Softball Confederation World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC; french: Confédération internationale de baseball et softball) is the Sports governing body, world governing body for the sports of baseball, softball, and Baseball5. It was established in 2013 by th ...

(WBSC).

References

External links

Results book
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baseball At The 2020 Summer Olympics

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in ...

2020 Summer Olympics events 2020 Summer Olympics

Olympics The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...