USA Baseball was founded in 1978, and is the governing body for amateur baseball in the United States of America. It is a member of the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) and organizes the United States national baseball team. In 2000, USA Baseball was named the USOC Team of the Year.
USA Baseball organizes various teams composed of High School, College, and Professional baseball players competing nationally and internationally.
In the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, baseball was a demonstration sport, but Team USA captured a silver and gold respectively. During the 1996 games in Atlanta, Georgia, the team won the bronze medal. In 2000, for the first time ever, the team was composed of minor league players. Guided by Tommy Lasorda, the team defeated two-time champion Cuba to capture the gold medal. However, the team failed to qualify for the 2004 Summer Olympics as they lost a qualifying tournament that saw them lose to Mexico in an elimination game during the quarter-final round.
The USA Baseball National Team is a made up of the top freshman and sophomore players of collegiate baseball. Each year the team embarks upon the Red, White and Blue Tour to play exhibition games against various teams in the United States, including an annual tour of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. The tour also features traditional match-ups against Japan and Canada. The National Team featured many MLB players like Mark McGwire, Nomar Garciaparra, Troy Glaus, Mark Prior, Jason Giambi, and Adam Everett.
USA Baseball also fields the Junior National Team (18-under) and the Youth National Team (16-under). It also organizes the USA Junior Olympic Baseball Championships and awards the Golden Spikes Award to the amateur baseball player of the year. Since 1998, USA Baseball has been selecting teams of Professional-level minor league players to represent the United States in various International competitions including the IBAF World Cup, IBAF Intercontinental Cup, Pan Am Games and Olympic Regional qualifying events. These players are hand selected by USA Baseball Directors from either affiliated MLB Minor League teams or Independent League teams.
Each June, USA Baseball sends at-large teams to the national all-stars tournament — the USA Baseball Tournament of Stars; its predecessor was the National Amateur All-Star Baseball Tournament (NAABT). The tournament features the top 16- to 18-year-old players from various baseball organizations, including the American Amateur Baseball Congress (AABC), American Legion, Babe Ruth Baseball, Dixie Baseball, National Amateur Baseball Federation (NABF), PONY baseball, Major League Baseball's "Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities" (RBI), and at-large teams from USA Baseball.[1]
The first USA Baseball women's national team was selected in 2004 to participate in the 2004 Women's World Series in Japan and in the 2004 Women's World Cup in Edmonton. The women's national team won the Silver Medal at the Women's World Series and brought home the Gold Medal from the 2004 *Women's World Cup. In 2006, the USA Baseball women's national team repeated as the Gold Medalist defeating Japan 13-11 in Taipei, Taiwan.
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In June 2005, Major League Baseball announced the formation of the World Baseball Classic, a 16 nation international competition to be held in March 2006 for the first time. A month after this announcement, the IOC voted to eliminate baseball from the 2012 London Olympic games, leaving the WBC as the only international tournament to feature American professionals.
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