#T. frazier olympic games tokyo 2020 series#

He had hoped for gold but went 6 for 24 with three RBIs and matched the silver he earned as a speedskater in 2014. Second baseman Eddy Alvarez became just the third American and sixth athlete overall to win medals at the Winter and Summer Games.

#T. frazier olympic games tokyo 2020 series#

143 (3 for 21) with one RBI and fell short in adding gold to the Little League World Series title he won with Toms River East American in New Jersey in 1998. stranded nine runners in the gold medal game and went hitless in four at-bats with men in scoring position.įrazier hit. While the Japanese team lacked MLB stars Shohei Ohtani and Yu Darvish, it was the class of the six-nation field.Īmerican pitchers led the Olympics with a 1.58 ERA to Japan’s 2.28, but American batters hit. “Little kids, focused on trying to be the next Mike Trout or the next Jacob deGrom.” “It’s the excitement, emotion, the enthusiasm,” he said. “And I think that it’s an incredible oversight not to have baseball included as a perennial sport in the Olympics.”įrazier spoke next, and in making the case for baseball’s inclusion, he inadvertently pointed out who was missing: the current generation’s best. “Baseball is played in so many countries around the world and it continues to keep growing,” Scioscia said. It already has been dropped for the 2024 Paris Games but may return for 2028 in Los Angeles and 2032 in Brisbane, Australia. and other countries whose top stars are in MLB.īaseball was contested in the Olympics for just the sixth time, the first since 2008, restored at the request of Japan as the host nation.

Teams were denied access to all 40-man roster players and many eligible top prospects by Major League Baseball and its clubs, hindering the U.S. Several hundred people who appeared to be team staff and Olympic volunteers cheered on the host nation in a largely empty 34,000-capacity Yokohama Stadium, some wearing orange Japan jerseys and matching facemasks on the warm and humid night.Īmerica, the nation that introduced baseball to Japan in 1872, finished 4-2. “We got within a couple breaks of winning the gold medal.”

“Our team played really under such different circumstances than they usually face back in the States in a normal season. twice in six days, also rallying in the ninth and winning 7-6 in 10 innings on Aug. He was proud the Samurai showed off their brand of baseball, which relies on defense, bunting and advancing runners, in defeating the American variety dependant on power and increasingly dominated by the Three True Outcomes: home runs, strikeouts and walks. Japan manager Atsunori Inaba, a former All-Star and batting champion, said the medals seemed shiny and felt heavy. manager Mike Scioscia, denied in his attempt to match the feat of his mentor, late Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who led the U.S.