U.S. Softball Team's Run Comes to an End

U.S. Softball Team's Run Comes to an End

BEIJING, Aug. 21 -- This was the empty feeling that was supposed to hit them weeks from now, when the members of the legendary U.S. softball team returned to their families and their old lives, only to be hit with the sudden realization their immediate futures no longer include the Olympic Games. In moments such as that, they could always pull out their gold medals, the last of which was to be handed to them Thursday night, and take some satisfied comfort from the memories of all that glory.

But the empty feeling came early. It came Thursday night at the Fengtai Softball Field, in a gold medal game the United States was supposed to win because, well, it always wins. It came at the hands of a team, Japan, the United States had beaten the day before. It came out of nowhere, and yet it didn't.

In Japan, perhaps this game will be known as the Miracle on Dirt, because its 3-1 victory may have been the biggest upset of these Olympics, or in three or four of them, and was being treated as such by Japan's ecstatic, weeping players in the wild postgame celebration. The Americans, winners of the only three gold medals awarded in softball before Thursday night, were the surest thing in Beijing, but they will leave here with only silver.

"I've always said, 'There's parity [in softball] -- you [in the media] just don't see it,' " U.S. pitcher Cat Osterman said. "Well, today you saw it."

On the medal stand, there were tears at all three stations -- the upstart Australians proud of their bronze, the Japanese champions literally quaking with glee, and the stunned Americans scarcely trying to hide their disappointment. The television cameraman lingered on the famous face of pitcher Jennie Finch, whose cheeks were lined with tears. Osterman waved and flashed a grim-faced glance to her family in the stands. Burly slugger Crystl Bustos looked stoic behind wraparound shades.

"It hurts a lot," said Bustos, whose fourth inning homer, her sixth of the Olympics, pulled the Americans to within 2-1. "You train your whole life, and you want to win. We're competitors. . . . You don't want it to end this way."

By "it," Bustos surely meant the Americans' 2008 medal hopes, but she may have just as well be referring to softball's run as an Olympic sport. Voted out by the IOC, along with baseball, for the 2012 London Games, its hopes of reinstatement hinge on a vote to be taken in October 2009 on the sport's petition for reinstatement for 2016 and beyond.

"Are we coming back? I wish I could tell [the players] right now, 'You're coming back,' " Don Porter, president of the International Softball Federation, said earlier this week. "But I can't."

It is difficult to overstate how dominant and indestructible the Americans appeared before Thursday night, at least on paper. These are the pertinent numbers: A 22-game Olympic winning streak, dating from Sydney 2000. An 8-0 record in these Games, five of which were shortened by a "mercy" rule, while outscoring opponents by a 57-2 margin. A .348 team batting average, while holding opposing hitters to an .054 mark. Gold medals in 1996, 2000 and 2004, while winning 32 of its 36 games.

The Americans' dominance, in fact, was often cited -- though never publicly by the IOC -- as a chief reason the sport was being sent to the awful purgatory inhabited by polo, croquet, tug of war and other discontinued sports. In a roundabout way, then, the Americans' loss may have been the best thing to happen to the sport -- though that was of little consolation to the players.

"Hopefully, for the young ones, there's a chance of reinstatement," Osterman said. "But I haven't thought that far ahead. For now it just hurts."

The Americans used several adjectives to describe their emotions -- hurt, disappointed, painful -- but one word that never came out of their mouths was "shocked." They were only a day removed from the narrowest of escapes against this same Japanese team -- and the same indomitable pitcher, Yukiko Ueno -- when the teams played eight scoreless innings before the United States put up four runs in the ninth and held on for a 4-1 win.

Ueno, a 5-foot-8 right-hander whose fastball, at up to 70 mph, is one of the fastest in the sport, threw 21 innings for Japan on Wednesday -- including the nine against the United States -- then strode back to the mound Thursday night. The only blemish against her in the gold medal game was Bustos's homer. Twice, she escaped bases-loaded, one-out jams without allowing runs.

"I was so tired," Ueno said. "But I had a strong mind, so I didn't feel tired."

When the Americans' final out was recorded, players slumped over where they stood. In the dugout, Osterman stood with her hands over her head, motionless. Eventually, Coach Mike Candrea gathered them near their dugout for a quick pep talk. He did not mention anything about the future of softball in the Olympics.

"I didn't want them to walk away," he said later, "and not absorb the accomplishments this team has had together."

In eight years -- the soonest softball could hope to return to the Olympics -- the oldest U.S. players will be in their 40s. There will be babies born into the greater USA Softball family, and present-day adolescents who will blossom into accomplished torch-bearers for a game played in more than 100 countries. And in the meantime, there is a World Cup still to focus on, and the world championships and the Pan-Am Games and on and on and on.

"We will move on. There will be softball," Candrea said. Then, speaking of either his team or his sport, he added, "We had a hell of a run."