TOKYO — During the baseball season, Tyler Austin plays his home games at Yokohama Baseball Stadium as part of the Yokohama DeNA Baystars, a team in Japan’s top professional league.
And now, on the U.S. baseball team at the Olympics, that very stadium is also home for Austin.
That familiarity — with not only his surroundings but the opposing pitchers as well — has helped Austin, 29, a former Yankees prospect, power the United States to the gold medal game on Saturday night. The opponent: Japan, a team made up of the very same players Austin faces in the professional league the rest of the year.