BEIJING (AP) Crystl Bustos hit a three-run homer in the ninth inning as the U.S. Olympic softball team, forced into extra innings, beat Japan 4-1 on Wednesday to advance to its fourth straight gold medal game.
"One win away," said U.S. center fielder Caitlin Lowe.
And the U.S. will have to beat Japan - again - to get it.
After losing in the morning to the U.S., Japan beat Australia 4-3 in 12 innings to secure a spot in the gold medal match. The Aussies were left with the bronze.
Blanked for eight innings by Yukiko Ueno, the Americans (8-0) pushed across four in the ninth to extend their Olympic winning streak to 22.
Tied after seven, the teams went to the international tiebreaker in the eighth as both began their at-bats with a runner at second base.
The U.S. team started the ninth with Natasha Watley on second and she scored when Caitlin Lowe bounced a single off Japan shortstop Rei Nishiyama's glove and into center field.
Jessica Mendoza walked and Bustos, softball's greatest power hitter, followed with her fifth homer of the games and 13th of her Olympic career - a blast to left that nearly cleared the bleachers at Fengtai Field.
Ueno tried to overpower the American cleanup hitter, who connected for fifth homer of these games and the 13th of her three-Olympic career - a blast to left that landed about five rows from the top of the 10,000-seat stadium.
"I was waiting for that pitch," Bustos said. "I knew she was going to come with it. I just wanted to get my bat on it."
Bustos smiled as she was asked to describe the feeling of driving a ball that far.
"You don't even feel it," she said. "Like I was telling coach, you don't even feel it hit the bat. You just feel the motions before it, but you don't feel it, you just see it."
Thursday's golden finale will be softball's last game in the Olympics until at least 2016. Three years ago in Singapore, the IOC, in a 52-52 vote with one abstention, booted it off London's schedule along with baseball.
Both sports are hoping to climb back inside the five rings, but there are no guarantees of a return.
Softball's critics point to the American team's dominance as being bad for the game, a charge Mendoza takes to heart.
"You watch Michael Phelps kick butt in the swimming pool and you watch our basketball team dominate," she said. "I would hope the IOC wants the Olympics to be about giving everything you possibly have, and if you happen to win by a lot, that's what makes the Olympics so beautiful."
IOC president Jacques Rogge stopped by to see the Japan-Australia game, which capped a sensational day of softball with two tiebreakers; a Canada-Australia matchup that went back and forth and Ueno pitching 21 innings to give her country a chance at gold.
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