updated 5:28 p.m. ET Aug. 24, 2004

ATHENS, Greece - Down to possibly its last strike in the Olympics, softball suddenly has a new problem: an American Dream Team that can’t find anyone to swing with.

Sound familiar?

Like the U.S. basketball squad of Magic, Bird, Jordan & Co. in the ’92 Barcelona Games, the U.S. softball team overwhelmed the competition in Athens. The Americans outscored the field by an absurd 51-1 margin, doing it with poise, precision and pop never seen before.

These All-American women raised the bar for excellence in the sport. Maybe, a little too high.

“It’s going to be tough to match what they did,” Australian coach Simon Roskvist said after the United States claimed its third straight gold medal, a 5-1 win over the Aussies on Monday. “But now it’s up to the rest of the world to get after them, and that’s going to be a challenge.”

And that’s an understatement.

If not for the Aussies scoring a run in the sixth inning of the final, the U.S. team would have thrown up nine zeros in nine games— a perfect Olympics. The Americans broke virtually every team record and set individual marks in offensive, defensive and pitching categories.

They were as dominant as any team, in any sport, at any time.

“This team got it done,” said pitcher Lisa Fernandez, who now has three gold medals and might go for a fourth in Beijing. “Our game never changed because of what the scoreboard said.”

And that is a problem.

Two years ago, the International Olympic committee recommended that softball be dumped from the Summer Games in 2008. The reasons: the U.S. team was too dominant; Europeans didn’t play softball or understand it; games were too long; there was little scoring and minimal media coverage.

The International Softball Federation countered by moving back the pitcher’s mound three feet, the fences another 20 and instituting the eighth-inning tiebreaker — all changes designed to bring competitive global balance.

The ISF defended the sport by pointing out that softball is played in 124 countries, gets consistently higher TV ratings than other sports and has never had a doping problem.

Softball is safe for now, guaranteed a spot through ’08. After that, either golf or rugby could take its place inside the rings.

Beijing could amount to softball’s last at-bat.

Slide show   Emotional Moments: Aug. 29 Trouble mars the marathon but the Olympic spirit prevails.

In that sense, a dominant U.S. team in Athens might have been the worst thing that could have happened. Sometimes being too good is not so good.

“It’s hard to imagine being really good at something as being a bad thing,” said catcher Stacey Nuveman, who hit one of the U.S. team’s three home runs against Australia. “In our country, in our culture, the goal is to be the best you can be.

“If that’s bad, then shame on the world.”

Shortly before Nuveman’s comment, ISF president Don Porter said that having a U.S. super team is a mixed blessing.

“There is a concern, certainly, but I don’t want to take anything away from what this team has accomplished,” he said. “We have to work harder to help other countries develop their softball programs and we’re doing that in many ways.”

Porter said the ISF has procured equipment for nations like China, North Korea and Russia, handing them the tools needed to one day get up to speed with a U.S. team clearly above the rest.

Slide show   Visions of gold: Aug. 29 Demark throws for handball gold, Argentina takes it to the net and Britain's Mark Lewis-Francis jumps for joy.

Right now, there is no other player like Natasha Watley, the U.S. team’s leadoff hitter who wreaks havoc with her slap singles and speed. There is no power hitter like America’s Crystl Bustos, who launched two home runs in the gold medal game, including a 330-footer that was truly Olympian.

And there is still not a better player on the planet than Fernandez. She went 4-0 and batted .545 in her third and best Olympics.

The world has proved it can catch up. In ’92, it seemed ridiculous to think it would ever happen in basketball. A dozen years later, the U.S. hoopsters are sweating it out for a medal.

Other countries learned how to shoot and pass the orange, leather ball.

Now, they have to figure out how to hit the small, yellow one.

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