Baseball at the 1912 Summer Olympics

Demonstration sport
Tournament details
Country	Sweden
City	Stockholm
Venue	Ostermalm Athletic Grounds
Dates	July 15–16, 1912 (1912-07-15 –1912-07-16)
Teams	2
Final positions
Champions	United States
Runners-up	Sweden
Tournament statistics
Games played	1
← 1904 1936 →

Baseball had its first appearance at the1912 Summer Olympics as ademonstration sport. It became an official sport 70 years later at the1992 Summer Olympics.^[a] A game was played between theUnited States, the nation where the game was developed, andSweden, the host nation. The game was held on Monday, 15 July 1912 and started at 10 a.m. on theOstermalm Athletic Grounds inStockholm; theU.S team won after six innings.

A second exhibition match was played between two American teams the next day, which notably included multi-sport Olympic athleteJim Thorpe, aMajor League Baseball player and futureAmerican footballHall of Famer.

The Americans were represented by various members of the AmericanOlympic track and field athletics delegation. The Swedish team was theVästerås baseball club, which had been formed by Swedish industrialistJ. Sigfrid Edström (a futurepresident of the International Olympic Committee) in 1910 as the first baseball club in Sweden.^[1]

Four of the Americans played for Sweden, as the Swedishpitchers andcatchers were inexperienced. One area of concern was that the Swedes were unfamiliar withbreaking balls; nevertheless, the Swedes were able to hold their own until the fifth inning, registering oneextra-base hit. One Swede eventually relieved Adams and Nelson, the American pitchers.

Six innings were played, with the Americans not batting in the sixth and allowing the Swedes to have six outs in their half of the inning.

The game was umpired byGeorge Wright, a retired AmericanNational League baseball player.

Since baseball was a demonstration sport, no official medals were awarded.

July 15, 10:00 atOstermalm Athletic Grounds

Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	R	H	E
United States	4	1	0	0	8	X	13	10	2
Sweden[b]	0	0	0	2	0	1	3	7	5
WP:Richard Byrd (1−0)  LP:Benjamin Adams (0−1) Umpires:George Wright

On the next day Tuesday, 16 July 1912 in the evening, two teams composed of an all-American line-up played an exhibition match against each other. This game includedJim Thorpe, who won two gold medals in the 1912 games (one inclassic pentathlon and the other indecathlon); Thorpe, a noted college athlete, had briefly playedminor league baseball in theEastern Carolina League (which later caused the IOC tostrip him of his medals; they were reinstated in 1983, thirty years after his death) and went on to play inMLB with theNew York Giants.

• Cava, Pete (Summer 1992)."Baseball in the Olympics".Citius, Altius, Fortius.1 (1):7–15.
• Official ReportArchived 10 April 2008 at theWayback Machine. 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games. 1912.

• Baseball at the 1912 Summer Olympics
• Events at the 1912 Summer Olympics
• Olympic baseball tournaments
• 1912 in baseball
• International baseball competitions hosted by Sweden
• Olympic demonstration sports

• CS1 Swedish-language sources (sv)
• Articles with short description
• Short description with empty Wikidata description
• Use dmy dates from September 2021
• Webarchive template wayback links