The Olympics have always had a love-hate relationship with baseball. In the early decades of the games, host cities organized various exhibitions, including a contest in 1956 in Melbourne that drew 114,000 spectators, but it wasn't until 1984 in Los Angeles that we saw the first Olympic baseball tournament, although it wasn't an official sport.
The United States, fielding a team of college players that included Mark McGwire, Barry Larkin, Will Clark, B.J. Surhoff and Bill Swift, played before sellout crowds at Dodger Stadium, but lost 6-3 to Japan in the first-place game. Baseball was again a demonstration sport at the Seoul games in 1988, with another team of U.