Card Of The Week August 25

The Twitter account for the Australian National Baseball Team (@TeamAusBasaeball)  has been recapping the team's performance during the 2004 Athens Olympics on the twentieth anniversary of each game.  Today was the twentieth anniversary of the Gold Medal game from that competition where Australia ended up losing to Cuba 6-2 and took the Silver Medal.  This has been the high point for Australia in international baseball and came at the expensive of an absolutely stacked Japanese team.  I've written about the 2004 Japanese Olympic Baseball Team and the Athens competition before so I won't repeat myself other than to point out that Australia was the only team who beat Japan in those Olympics.  They beat them 9-3 in pool play and then Chris Oxspring out-dueled Daisuke Matsuzaka 1-0 in the semi-final game to put the Aussies in the final against Cuba.  Relief pitcher Jeff Williams who was a member of the Hanshin Tigers at the time was instrumental in shutting down the Japanese offense in the late innings of both games.

Today was also the anniversary of the Bronze Medal game where Japan took out their frustrations on the Canadians 11-2.  What I found interesting about the Gold and Bronze Medal games is that there are two players who appeared those games who are still active twenty years later!  Tsuyoshi Wada of the Hawks was the starting pitcher for Japan that day and Yuli Gurriel, currently playing in Triple-A in Atlanta's organization, was Cuba's second baseman.  Ten years later, Gurriel would play 62 games with the Yokohama DeNA Baystars and would sign a contract to play with them again in 2015, only to somewhat mysteriously refuse to report to Japan.  Here's cards of both Wada and Gurriel:

2023 BBM 1st Version #031

2014 Calbee Series Three #242

Some other quick notes - 2004 was the first time Japan sent an all professional team to the Olympic.  It was also the last time Cuba took Gold - they'd lose to South Korea in the finals in 2008 and were not involved in the 2021 Tokyo Games.  And amazingly, there's a player from the 2000 Sydney Games who's still active - Masanori Ishikawa of the Swallows.