Mark McGwire may be the most famous Olympic baseball player.
McGwire, then a 20-year-old who had yet to play a professional game (and 25 years before he admitted to steroid use in the 1990s), beat out Will Clark for the starting first base job on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team.
McGwire, Clark and Barry Larkin turned out to be the biggest MLB stars from those Los Angeles Olympics, where American players were recent collegians. Larkin remains the only MLB Hall of Famer with Olympic experience.
Tryouts included more than 3,000 candidates — from a 12-year-old girl to a 43-year-old man — scattered across 63 open one-day tryouts in fall 1983, according to Sports Illustrated.