Baseball's stature in the history of the United States is perhaps reflected more clearly in a simple dictionary rather than in the seven-centimetre-thick baseball encyclopedia.

There, you can find the word Ruthian, meaning "of mammoth proportions", as in a home run by Babe Ruth back in the 1920s. There, you can find Lou Gehrig's disease, as the incurable degenerative illness amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has been better known since Lou Gehrig, Ruth's team-mate, died from it in the 1940s. In the United States, baseball and the English language are interwoven.

However, just as the game did not begin as a wholly US enterprise, it did not end the 20th century as one either. Baseball's all-time home-run champion is a man named Sadaharu Oh, who hit 868 during a legendary career in baseball-mad Japan. The national team of Cuba overpowered the Baltimore Orioles of the US major leagues 12-6 in a 1999 exhibition game.

American baseball became a full medal sport in Barcelona in 1992.

Teams qualify through regional series that produce two teams each from the Americas, Europe and Asia and another from a playoff between the top teams from Oceania and Africa.

At the Games, each team plays the other seven once, and the top four teams advance to the semi-finals. The first-placed team then plays the fourth-placed team, and the second plays the third. The winners of those semi-finals meet to decide the gold and silver medals, with the two losing teams playing for the bronze.

Baseball is played between two teams taking turns batting and fielding. The object is to score the most runs in nine innings. Each team's turn at bat ends when three of its batters have been ruled out. If the score is tied after nine innings, the teams play another inning at a time until one team leads.