Baseball at the 2008 Summer Olympics in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

was held from August 13 to August 23. All games were played at

Wukesong Baseball Field The Wukesong Arena (), also known as the Cadillac Arena () for sponsorship purposes, is a multipurpose indoor arena in Beijing. It was originally built for the 2008 Summer Olympics basketball preliminaries and finals. Ground was broken on 29 ...

, a temporary venue constructed at the

Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center The Wukesong Arena (), also known as the Cadillac Arena () for sponsorship purposes, is a multipurpose indoor arena in Beijing. It was originally built for the 2008 Summer Olympics basketball preliminaries and finals. Ground was broken on 29 M ...

. For the third time in Olympic competition, professional baseball players were eligible to participate, though no active players from

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

were available. This was the last Olympic baseball tournament before the

International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...

voted to remove baseball from the program in the 2012 Olympics. Along with

softball Softball is a game similar to baseball played with a larger ball on a smaller field. Softball is played competitively at club levels, the college level, and the professional level. The game was first created in 1887 in Chicago by George Hanc ...

, baseball was rejected for inclusion in the 2016 Summer Olympics at the IOC's meeting in October 2009. However, following a 2016 IOC vote, baseball was again included for the 2020 Games. This was also the first time that the IBAF's new extra-innings rule was officially in effect, allowing each team to start with two base runners from the 11th inning on.

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 ...

won the gold medal in a 3–2 final victory against

Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...

Medalists

Competition format

Eight teams are competing in the Olympic baseball tournament, and the competition consists of two rounds. The preliminary round follows a

round robin Round-robin may refer to: Computing * Round-robin DNS, a technique for dealing with redundant Internet Protocol service hosts * Round-robin networks, communications networks made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology * Round-robin schedu ...

format, where each of the teams plays all the other teams once. Following this, the top four teams advance to a single elimination round culminating in the bronze and gold medal games.

Qualification

' Chinese Taipei is the official

IOC The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...

designation for the state officially referred to as the Republic of China (ROC), commonly known as

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

Team squad

Group stage

All times are

China Standard Time The time in China follows a single standard time offset of UTC+08:00 (eight hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time), even though the country spans almost five geographical time zones. The official national standard time is called ''Beijing Tim ...

(

UTC+8 UTC+08:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +08:00. With an estimated population of 1.708 billion living within the time zone, roughly 24% of the world population, it is the most populous time zone in the world, as well as a ...

)

August 13

August 14

August 15

August 16

August 17

August 18

August 19

August 20

Knockout stage

Semifinals

Bronze medal match

Gold medal match

Final standings

Notes

References

IOC BaseballInternational Baseball FederationConfederation of European BaseballStats from the 2008 Olympics: Baseball at SimCentral.NET

External links

Baseball – Official Results Book
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baseball At The 2008 Summer Olympics 2008 Summer Olympics events

Summer Olympics The Summer Olympic Games (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques d'été), also known as the Games of the Olympiad, and often referred to as the Summer Olympics, is a major international multi-sport event normally held once every four years. The inau ...

2008 File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing; ...

2008 Summer Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and also known as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes from 204 Na ...

Baseball in Beijing