Japan shocks the U.S. with softball gold

Americans had won four straight gold medals before being awarded silver.

BEIJING (AP) — They walked around in a daze unsure of what to do next.

Andrea Duran leaned on a fence and cried. Lovieanne Jung sat alone on the charter bus. Laura Berg politely signed a few autographs for Olympic volunteers. Stacey Nuveman and Monica Abbott hugged each other tightly, almost afraid to let go.

The U.S. softball team never thought it would lose. Not here, not now, not in these Olympics.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to end,” pitcher Cat Osterman said.

In softball’s final appearance for at least four years — and perhaps for good — the good-as-gold Americans met their match.

Behind a rubber-armed pitcher who stared down the world’s mightiest lineup and never blinked, Japan stunned the U.S. team 3-1 Thursday, denying the Americans a fourth straight gold medal in the sport’s last swing until at least 2016.

The loss was the first for the Americans since Sept. 21, 2000 at the Sydney Games. They had won 22 in a row, most by outrageously lopsided scores. With power pitchers, power hitters, power everything, the Americans set the standard and showed no signs of slowing down.

But Yukiko Ueno, who pitched 21 innings one day earlier to give her country a shot at gold, worked out of two bases-loaded jams as Japan outplayed the Americans with solid defense and two big hits.

“We had opportunities,” said Nuveman, a three-time Olympic catcher. “We just couldn’t get that big hit.”

This was the upset the softball world had been waiting for. And, in a strange way, the one it may have needed.

The U.S. has dominated the sport since its Olympic debut in 1996, and that utter domination — outscoring the field 51-1 four years ago in Greece — that may have contributed to the International Olympic Committee’s decision to drop the sport from the 2012 London Games.

To bolster its case for reinstatement, softball needs to show the IOC before its next vote (set for Denmark in October 20O9) that it has grown globally and that the rest of the world was gaining on the Americans.

Well, here’s proof.

“If this can be an aid to get us back in the games, then so be it,” U.S. coach Mike Candrea said.