Baseball schedule and results »

Baseball

Overview Format Contenders The Team The Basics Venue Media

For the average Australian sports fan, baseball is something of a curiosity.

Some interest is expressed around World Series time, the Claxton Shield - the nation's domestic baseball competition - is followed sporadically at best and perhaps the sport's most noteworthy achievement has been that it was played by former Australian cricket captain Allan Border in his youth.

Despite this, Australia managed a silver medal in Athens, beaten in the gold-medal match by the mighty Cubans.

That effort followed seventh-placed finishes in both Sydney in 2000 and Atlanta in 1996.

The fall from grace for Australia has been swift though - the national team failed to qualify for Beijing.

There is plenty of speculation that Beijing may be baseball's final fling at Olympic level, with the sport under pressure to hold its place in future Games.

Baseball was an exhibition sport at the Olympic Games seven times between 1912 and 1988.

It became a medal sport in 1992 in Barcelona, and to date the Cubans have won all the gold medals awarded apart from in Sydney, where the United States triumphed.

Of course, the United States is baseball's major power. The US has given the game its biggest, most colourful and most successful figures.

Babe Ruth, Joe Di Maggio, Jackie Robinson, Pete Rose - champions, all of them.

In the United States baseball is more than a game - it is part of the culture, part of the psyche, it is inextricably tied up with American pie. From little league to Yankee Stadium, America is obsessed with baseball.

But its chances at Olympic level have been hamstrung by a ban on professional players.

Atlanta in 1996 marked the end of that policy, with teams for Sydney allowed to include professional players.

However, given that the Games generally coincide with the run-up to the world series play-offs in the US, the top professionals in that league have not been able to play.