Softball, Women

Softball had been on the Olympic Program from 1996-2008 but was dropped after the Beijing Olympics. It returned for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, but with some caveats. The women and the men, who played baseball, would have only six teams in their tournaments, to keep the number of athletes smaller. To avoid requiring the Organizing Committee to build an extra new facility, softball was played on a baseball diamond, with the baseball pitchers’ mound strangely located between second base and the softball mound. Outfield fences were artificially moved in, which meant there was no warning track for outfielders.

The six teams in the Olympic Tournament were Japan, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Italy. They played a round-robin tournament that advanced the top two, the USA and Japan, to the gold medal game, while the 3rd- and 4th-place finishers, Mexico and Canada, played for the bronze medal.

The bronze medal game was held first on 27 July. Canada scored two runs in the second inning and added another in the fifth. Mexico chipped away with runs in the third and fifth innings but could not score in the top of the seventh, and Canada held on for the win and the bronze medal, 3-2.

The pitching match-up for the gold medal game was Japan’s Yukiko Ueno facing American Cat Osterman. Osterman had played at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics and had come out of retirement to play in Tokyo at 38-years-old. Osterman was pulled in the third inning, after loading the bases, although Ally Carda got her out of the jam in relief. She gave up runs to Japan in the fourth and fifth innings and was replaced by Monica Abbott but it was too late for the Americans, who never scored. Miu Goto relieved Ueno in the 7th inning and closed out the game for a 2-0 shut-out and a Japanese gold medal. Japan actually defended their gold medal, as they also won in 2008.