Ally Carda Leads USA to World Games Gold and World Championship

You can’t win the last game. You can only win the next one. 

Few softball players understand that better than Ally Carda, a pitcher who has chased success and disappointment across oceans over the past decade. So it was only fitting that Carda, who took the loss when Team USA was shut out by Japan for Olympic gold last summer, settled under the final out of Wednesday’s 3-2 victory against the same opponent in the World Games. 

Redemption. Revenge. The labels make for good storylines, but they aren’t reality. Wednesday wasn’t any of those things. The win in Hoover, Alabama, doesn’t erase the sting of defeat last summer in Tokyo. It wasn’t about erasing that pain, but instead creating the joy evident on the faces of Monica Abbott, Carda, Haylie McCleney and their teammates as they accepted their medals in a tournament that doubled as the WBSC’s world championship event. 

They weren’t Olympic champions. Wednesday, they had a chance to be world champions.

And they took it. 

They took it in no small part thanks to the pitcher who long ago had to learn how to turn the page. A world champion in 2016, Carda lost her place on the national team and missed out on a chance to defend that title. She fought back, learning and growing while playing in Japan alongside some of the same players she faced Wednesday. She earned her roster spot and the chance to live her Olympic dream, even delayed a year by a global pandemic. Only to see that dream end as the tough-luck pitcher of record in what may yet be the sport’s Olympic farewell. 

So, she did what she does best. She came back and tried again, one of the veterans in a national program in transition this summer. She excelled in Tuesday’s semifinal victory against Australia. And when called on in relief Wednesday, she pithed the three innings of her life to shut the door on Japan. 

She learned long ago that the only game you can win is the next one. Team USA just followed her lead. 

Read more: Ally Carda’s road back to Team USA

Here’s how the gold medal was settled in Hoover. 

Two of the best trade early escapes 

Like Ally Carda a night earlier, Abbott found herself in peril before she even gave up a hit. After Nodoka Harada reached on a Charla Echols error to lead off the game, Yamato Fujita’s two-out walk gave Japan a golden opportunity to make Team USA start seeing Olympic ghosts. 

In a preview of things to come, Abbott escaped the jam by striking out Hitomi Kawabata to end the inning (but only after Kawabata nearly poked a run-scoring single down the third base line). 

The American ace found even more trouble in the second inning, as Japan loaded the bases with two outs after two singles and a walk. Again, Abbott evaded damage, using her 50th pitch in the opening two innings to coax an inning-ending grounder out of Kyoko Ishikawa. 

Abbott wasn’t the only ace battling. Despite allowing a leadoff single to Haylie McCleney (of course), Fujita faced the minimum in the bottom of the first. But she matched her American counterpart by loading the bases in the second inning, singles from Echols and Dejah Mulipola sandwiching a Bubba Nickles walk. 

Janae Jefferson pulls a McCleney 

Fujita gave herself a chance by getting two outs without allowing a run, the bases still loaded. One more out would get Japan out of the inning without damage and without facing McCleney. 

Jefferson didn’t want to be that out. The former Texas All-American lined a ball that cleared the infield and skipped all the way to the left-center fence against an outfield playing in and shading her to right-center. All three runners scored easily for a 3-0 lead – runs Team USA never did find in last summer’s Olympic gold medal game defeat. 

Perhaps the only silver lining for Japan was Fujita than retired McCleney for the final out, the first time anyone had retired the home-state hero in the medal rounds. 

Japan answers with one – but leaves three

It was easy to envision a scenario where, in the wake of Jefferson’s big hit, Abbott settled in and cruised through the rest of the game. Many nights against many teams, she might have. But on this night, the reigning Olympic champions weren’t about to capitulate. 

Fujita’s one-out single in the top of the third inning, when she didn’t even finish her swing in the process of poking the ball to the opposite field, seemed harmless enough. But it ignited a rally that soon enough led to Minori Naito cutting the deficit to 3-1 with an RBI single – Japan’s fourth single against Abbott in less than three innings. 

Japan promptly loaded the bases after Abbott hit Yui Sakamoto and allowed a single that didn’t produce another run only thanks to a strong throw from Bubba Nickles that held the runner rounding third. Abbott then found the final out to escape further damage. 

Carda out of the bullpen and into legend

The fourth and fifth innings passed without any additional runs, but not for any lack of runners. 

Team USA left the bases loaded in the bottom of the fourth against reliever Sakura Miwa, and Japan wasn’t much more efficient at the plate. Abbott stranded two more runners in the fourth inning before Team USA coach Heather Tarr turned to the bullpen following a leadoff double by Naito in the top of the fifth inning. 

Tarr could have gone to Montana Fouts, so good in relief a night earlier, or Megan Faraimo. She went instead with Carda, the veteran with far more experience against Japan. 

As was the case a night earlier, when she struggled through the first inning of the semifinal, Carda encountered some immediate adversity. Sakamoto’s RBI single down the third base line cut the deficit to 3-2 before Carda had recorded an out (the run charged to Abbott).

It was also very nearly the last time a Japanese batter put the ball in play. Carda struck out two of the next three batters and made a nice defensive play on a bunt to get out of the fifth. Despite a leadoff walk, she struck out three more in the sixth – including Fujita on a rise ball. 

Throwing her whole body into pitches in a way that sometimes made it difficult to tell whether she or her rise ball had more vertical movement, she struck out the first two batters in the top of the seventh inning. Seven strikeouts in the span of nine batters against the Olympic champs. A stretch as good as anything Abbott or Yukiko Ueno ever produced. 

And then came the final out, a weakly hit pop descending into her glove.