Cat Osterman Alert

USA Softball, the favorites to win an Olympic gold medal in softball, dominated their opening match of the Beijing Olympics by trouncing Venezuela 11–0. Jennie Finch and Monica Abbott pitched a combined no-hitter.

The highlight of the night for me was Caitlin Lowe’s inside the park homerun. She hit the ball over the left-fielder who was playing very shallow. As soon as the ball landed, knowing Lowe’s speed, I said to myself that’s an inside the park home run, and sure enough, Lowe scored easily on the play.

Most likely, Cat Osterman (right) will start for the USA on Wednesday against Australia, the silver medalist at the Athens Olympics. Osterman is considered by many to be the best pitcher in the world, and she has such great movement on her pitches that she often makes the batters look foolish. Australia lost 4–3 to Japan on Tuesday, but they were able to score against Japan’s fireballing ace Yukiko Ueno. It will be interesting to see how Australia hits against Osterman after having some success against Ueno.

The broadcast from Beijing on CNBC was quite a disappointment. The announcers were in New York, so they must have been announcing the game while watching it on a screen back in the studio. And while the announcers did a fine job of describing the game, it was obvious that the announcers hadn’t interviewed or spoken to the teams before the game, and there were no sideline reporters. Unlike the ESPN softball broadcasts over the summer and in the Women’s College World Series, the CNBC broadcast didn’t give you the feeling that you were there in the park. There were also no post-game interviews.

Another thing lacking was the ability (that ESPN does so well) to splice in highlights from other softball moments. So when Lowe, playing centerfield, ran back towards the wall and made a diving catch, you could just imagine if the broadcast had been on ESPN that they would have shown you the spectacular play where Caitlin Lowe ran into the wall in the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

The final CNBC disappointment was that their commercial breaks often caused you to miss a pitch or two at the start of the next inning. One player you definitely don’t want to miss is Crystl Bustos, who hits tape measure homeruns. And when Bustos led off the third inning with a homerun, we didn’t get to see it live. The replay was also a disappointment, as you couldn’t even see how far the ball was hit.