The most coveted gold medal for the Olympic host nation next year? A strong case can be made for its national sport of baseball, which returns to the Olympic program — at the request of Tokyo organizers — for the first time since 2008.
Japan never took gold the five times baseball was previously on the Olympic medal program. It came agonizingly close, reaching at least the semifinals in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008.
While MLB never sent its best to the Games, players from Japan’s top league have participated, including Masahiro Tanaka, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Yu Darvish, before they came became big-leaguers.