By TOM WITHERS, AP Sports Writer
BEIJING (AP)—As the softball screamed into the seats,
Crystl Bustos had a three-run homer,
Monica Abbott had a four-run cushion and the
U.S. team’s Olympic winning streak finally looked safe.
Not before the Americans had to sweat like never before.
There’s one more game for gold, then one last goodbye.
Pushed to extra innings after routing nation after nation, the U.S. scored four runs in the ninth off
Yukiko Ueno and beat
Japan 4-1 on Wednesday, earning the Americans a shot at their fourth straight gold medal—in the sport’s sad swansong for at least eight years.
“One win away,” said U.S. center fielder
Caitlin Lowe.
And the U.S. will have to beat Japan again to get it. The Japanese beat
Australia 4-3 in 12 innings to advance, leaving the Aussies with the bronze.
Bustos’ three-run rocket in the ninth, which nearly cleared the left-field bleachers at Fengtai Field, put the finishing touches on a Japanese team that gave this American-made scoring machine all it could handle.
Japan was so close.
With a runner at second base in the seventh against Abbott, the defending bronze medalist was 120 feet from the upset of upsets. All it would have taken was a hit, just a bloop to score the winning run and spin the softball world on its stitched head.
It wasn’t to be. Tested to the max, the U.S. came away with another win.
“And Bustos dotted the ‘i’,” coach Mike Candrea said.
The Americans had won their first seven games in Beijing by a combined 53-1 and came in batting .377 as a team to their opponents’ .042. The U.S. needed just five innings to claim its last four victories before the mercy rule was enforced.
It was a continuation of the Athens Games:
Greece Part II.
Four years ago, the U.S. rolled to gold in the shadow of the Acropolis. The Americans rewrote the record book, breaking 18 marks while winning their third straight Olympic title in the 12 years since softball joined the games in 1996.
Damn Yankees! That’s what the International Olympic Committee seemed to be saying when the sport was voted off the 2012 program, a decision that stunned softball to its core and left its supporters hoping this tournament would be more competitive.
Until Wednesday, it wasn’t.
But Ueno, who has beaten the Americans four times since 2004, held the U.S. sluggernaut in check as long as she could.
“She hit her spots really well, and she capitalized on the fact that we were trying so hard,”
Jessica Mendoza said.
Maybe too hard. Was the U.S. team getting nervous with gold in its sights?
“I wouldn’t say nervous,” Mendoza said. “It’s more like that internal want, if that’s the right way to describe it. You’re so close to getting to that game that you want to be in. You want that win, and you’re that close. You could just feel us want it, want it and want it.”
They almost didn’t get it.
Ueno shut them out for seven innings, and just as they did in Greece four years ago before losing, Japan took the U.S. into extra frames when the international tiebreaker goes into effect.
Each team begins its at-bat in the eighth with a runner—the No. 9 hitter due up that inning—on second base.
“I hate it,” Candrea said. “I’d rather keep playing.”
But Candrea, who led the U.S. to gold in Athens, makes his team practice the tense situations all the time.
The Americans started the eighth with the speedy
Natasha Watley on second. Lowe followed by bouncing a base hit off shortstop
Rei Nishiyama’s glove and into center field, scoring Watley who was greeted with hugs by her teammates.
U.S. 1, Japan 0.
“A relief,” said Lowe.
Ueno, who would later pitch all 12 innings in the win over Australia, then walked Mendoza, and although first base was open, Japan manager Haruka Saito elected to have his ace pitch to Bustos, the undisputed queen of all softball power hitters.
Bustos had grounded out, struck out and popped out in her three previous at-bats, so when she stepped into the batter’s box, the 30-year-old’s game plan was to make Ueno, who jammed her on the hands with a pitch in the seventh, throw her an inside pitch.
She got it.
She destroyed it.
“I knew she was going to go there again,” said Bustos, whose shot came about five rows from exiting the 10,000-seat stadium. “I was ready.”
Before breaking toward third, Lowe looked over her shoulder and admired her teammate’s fifth homer of these games and 13th in three Olympics.
“So cool,” Lowe said. “I felt like I was doing the home-run trot around the bases. When Bustos gets a hold of one, you know it’s out. It was a great kind of exclamation point on the day.”
Bustos chuckled when she was asked to describe the feeling of turning on a ball and driving it that far.
“You don’t even feel it,” she said. “Like I was telling coach, you don’t even feel it hit the bat. You just feel the motions before it, but you don’t feel it, you just see it.”
Bustos knew Ueno wouldn’t walk her.
“That’s one thing with Japan,” she said. “They’re going to come at you.”
The U.S. could face Japan again, this time for gold. The Americans, who have now outscored the field 57-2 in
China, will face the winner of the Japan-Australia bronze-medal game.
Thursday’s golden finale will be softball’s last game in the Olympics until at least 2016. Three years ago in
Singapore, the IOC, in a 52-52 vote with one abstention, booted it off London’s schedule along with baseball.
Both sports are hoping to climb back inside the five rings, but there are no guarantees of a return.
Softball’s critics point to the U.S.’s team dominance as being bad for the game, a charge Mendoza takes to heart.
“You watch
Michael Phelps kick butt in the swimming pool and you watch our basketball team dominate,” she said. “I would hope the IOC wants the Olympics to be about giving everything you possibly have, and if you happen to win by a lot, that’s what makes the Olympics so beautiful.
“As much as a close game like this is fun to watch, I think it’s the sport itself that should remain.”
IOC president Jacques Rogge stopped by to see the Japan-Australia game, which capped a sensational day of softball with two tiebreakers; a
Canada-Australia matchup that went back and forth, and Ueno pitching 21 innings to give her country a chance at gold.
The U.S team knew it would get a close game sooner or later.
Abbott, who matched Ueno pitch for pitch and allowed only three hits in eight innings, was ready for a nail-biter.
“We came here prepared for the 20-inning game, the 16-inning game, the 14-inning game, and the five-inning game,” she said.
The Americans got the nine-inning one, and now they’re ready for the next one.
The last one.
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