Softball

The U.S. women's softball team calls its pre-Olympic tuneup the Bound 4 Beijing tour. A better name is Bound 4 Beijing . . . and then Olympic oblivion. The International Olympic Committee, in one of the less enlightened moves by a rarely enlightened body, voted in 2005 to kick softball and baseball out of the Games after this year. There's a semblance of logic for dropping baseball. Because its season conflicts with the Games, its top players aren't available for the Olympics.

BEIJING -- Interstate 35 between Oklahoma City and Fort Worth is four hours of unforgiving highway. And Caitlin Lowe couldn't believe she and her teammates on the U.S. softball team, then in the midst of a 60-game, 44-city pre-Olympic tour, were going to travel it twice in the same day -- with a game thrown in between for good measure. "Why are we doing this?" Lowe protested. For Coach Mike Candrea, the answer was simple: Why not?

BEIJING -- With each game, the USA softball team finds itself playing not just one opponent but two. Always looming along with the teams from Canada, Australia and Japan is the Americans' legacy, none of that more prominent than the 2004 Olympic gold medalists. That team, which went 9-0 by a combined score of 51-1, may forever stand as the most dominant Olympic team in any sport. But it also has the potential to haunt the Americans if they allow it. "People ask, 'How can you top '04?'

BEIJING -- The U.S. women's softball team, seemingly on another roll to an Olympic gold medal, may run into its toughest test yet Friday against Japan. Japan, coming off a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics, gave the Americans their toughest battle in Athens with a 3-0 victory in eight innings and has defeated the American team twice since then. Both the USA and Japan had tough victories against Australia in recent days, Japan defeating Australia in the opener, with the U.S.

Cat Osterman was almost apologetic. "It was bound to happen," said the U.S. softball team pitcher. "I'm not too worried about it." And the crisis? The first hit off Osterman in the Beijing Games in 11 innings. Osterman also has struck out 21 in two victories, but U.S. Coach Mike Candrea apparently was trying to keep his players on their toes as the round-robin tournament heads into its last three days of play before the semifinals.

Softball has taken Laura Berg to three Olympic Games and, with any luck, she'll play in her fourth next summer in Beijing. "The Olympics, it's different," said the former Fresno State star who has won the gold in each of those three Olympics. "It's just something very, very exciting to be able to be a part of. Walking into that stadium during opening ceremonies and you have this huge stadium full of people chanting and taking pictures. "It's hard to explain." But for the next generation of U.S.

Lisa Fernandez has returned to the USA national softball team after a three-year absence because she'd love to win a fourth Olympic gold medal, her rise ball is still good and her 2-year-old son Antonio might love the experience of seeing his mom go to the Olympics.

In a move that throws the future of softball in the Olympics into even deeper doubt, the International Olympic Committee's policy-making executive board Sunday approved new quotas that will add 128 more female athletes to the Olympic program in the 2008 Beijing Games than competed in 2004 in Athens. The IOC's general assembly voted last July to cut baseball and softball from the Olympics after the 2008 Games. The excision of softball means the loss of 120 women.

Seven months after being kicked out of the Olympics, baseball and softball struck out again on Thursday, both sports losing votes for reconsideration. They will be Olympic sports for the last time at Beijing in 2008. Baseball, needing 45 votes of 88 cast, got 42 -- with 46 members voting against. Softball, needing 46 votes of 90, got 43 -- with 47 against.