The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
USA Baseball wins fourth in a row at Olympics
08.20.2008 | Baseball
Aug. 20, 2008
BEIJING ­-- Team USA closed out round-robin action of the 2008 Beijing Olympics with an 11-inning, 4-2 win over Japan on Wednesday evening.
Texas Ex Taylor Teagarden was the starting catcher for Team USA (5-2) and recorded eight putouts in the game.
The Americans, who had already secured a spot in the medal round, wrapped up the third seed with the victory. Team USA is slated to face Cuba in the Friday's semifinal action while Japan will face No. 1 seed South Korea.
With both teams having already earned a spot in the medal round prior to the game, both teams used numerous pitchers and the result was 10 innings of scoreless baseball. Team USA used four different pitchers with no one tossing more than three innings. The result was the teams combining for five total hits through 10 frames, including just two for the Americans.
The scoreless tie was unknotted thanks to international baseball's new extra-inning rule that mandates that each team start the 11th inning with runners on first and second base and allow teams to start at any point in their batting order. Brian Barden, Nate Schierholtz and Matt Brown all hit RBI singles and John Gall plated the fourth run with a groundout.
Japan (4-3) was only able to knock in two runs in its half of the 11th with RBI singles by Atsunori Inaba and Hiroyuki Nakajima.
Team USA faces Western Hemisphere rival Cuba in the second semifinal game on Friday morning (Friday night in China). First pitch is slated for 5 a.m. Central with live streaming available on NBCOlympics.com. MSNBC will show portions of the game on tape-delay between 1-4 p.m. on Friday afternoon. In the first semifinal contest, Japan plays South Korea at 9:30 p.m. Central on Thursday evening (Friday morning in China) with live streaming available on NBCOlympics.com. Portions of the game may be shown on tape-delay during CNBC's coverage between 11 p.m. Thursday evening and 3 a.m. Friday morning.
