South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Japan captures 1st baseball gold medal
Japan’s players sprinted onto the mound and the collection of All-Stars hoisted their manager up and down as if on a trampoline.
They beamed when hanging shiny gold medals around each other’s necks, fullfilling a national mission with the first Olympic baseball title in their history.
American players didn’t seem overly upset. The released veterans, prospects and career minor leaguers thought they had given their best.
“I really feel like we left it all out there,” pitcher Nick Martinez said after Japan eeked out enough runs to win Saturday night’s gold-medal game 2-0.
Munetaka Murakami, at 21 the youngest player in Japan’s starting lineup, hit an opposite-field homer over the 16-foot wall in left-center on a 2-2 pitch from Martinez
(1-1) in the third. Martinez winced as the ball landed in the fourth row of the empty blue seats.
“I thought we had him set up nice for a changeup there,” Martinez said. “Just a nice piece of hitting,”
Japan added an unearned run in the eighth when Tetsuto Yamada singled off reliever Scott McGough leading off, Hayato Sakamoto sacrificed, Masataka Yoshida singled and center fielder Jack Lopez heaved the ball past the plate for a run-scoring error.
Masato Morishita (2-0), a 23-year-old right-hander, gave up three hits over five innings, struck out five and walked none. Kodai Senga, Hiromi Itoh, Suguru Iwazaki and Ryoji Kuribayashi finished a six-hitter, and the Japanese men (5-0) matched the accomplishment of the women’s softball team, which upended the Americans by the same score for their second straight gold medal.
“They deserved to win,” said U.S. 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. to the 2000 gold medal.
Baseball was contested in the Olympics for just the sixth time, the first since 2008, restored at the request of Japan as the host nation. It already has been dropped for the 2024 Paris Games but may return for 2028 in Los Angeles and
2032 in Brisbane, Australia.
“Baseball is played in so many countries around the world and it continues to keep growing,” Scioscia said. “And I think that it’s an incredible oversight not to have baseball included as a perennial sport in the Olympics.”
The French players danced around the court, singing and waving towels.
They then threw coach Laurent Tillie in the air a couple of times before heading to the corner of Ariake Arena to sing along some more with the dozens of French officials at the near-empty venue.
This was a celebration a long time coming for French volleyball. France made sure its first Olympic volleyball medal would be gold, beating the Russians 25-23, 25-17, 21-25, 21-25, 15-12 Saturday night in a breakthrough win for a country that had no history of success.
“It’s just pure happiness, pure joy, just an unbelievable feeling,” middle blocker Barthelemy Chinenyeze said.
Hassan dominates distance: By the time she reached the 65th and final lap of her eight-day Olympic odyssey, Sifan Hassan’s neck had seized up and she couldn’t turn her head. She could barely breathe and she couldn’t feel her arms anymore.
As she neared the end, she couldn’t see properly and thought “why did they move the finish line?”
Her legs knew right where it was.
Deep into her sixth race across three distances that covered more than 24 kilometers on Tokyo’s sweltering Olympic track, Hassan burst past world-record holder Letesenbet Gidey to win the 10,000-meter gold on Saturday.
“I have never gone deep like I have gone today,” Hassan said.
No one has.
Two of her medals were gold — the 10,000 added to the 5,000 she won to kick off the Games. She also won a bronze in the 1,500, the race that nearly ended it all near the start of the quest.
Brazil beats Spain for soccer title: Soccer’s ultimate winner is still finding time to collect new titles. Dani Alves is an Olympic champion at 38.
Draped in the Brazilian flag, the captain cherished the
43rd winners’ medal of a career that shows no sign of winding down.
All that’s missing from the set of major honors after this
2-1 victory over Spain — secured in extra time by Malcolm — is World Cup glory.
Don’t write off the game’s most decorated player trying to make it to Qatar next year.
After all, the right back was determined to come to the Tokyo Games after not being part of the 2016 Olympic gold on home soil in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. And he managed to play all of Brazil’s six games in Japan — 600 minutes in
16 days.
“This is a dream coming true, to be on the top of the Olympic podium,” he said. “No matter how much history you have, how much experience you have. I came here for the first time and to come back with the biggest prize ... I am lost for words.”