The Americans were represented by various members of the American Olympic track and field athletics delegation, while the Swedish team was the Västerås baseball club, which had been formed in 1910 as the first baseball club in Sweden.
Four of the Americans played for Sweden, as the Swedish pitchers and catchers were inexperienced. One area of concern was that the Swedes were unfamiliar with breaking balls; nevertheless, the Swedes were able to hold their own until the fifth inning, registering one extra-base hit. One Swede eventually relieved Adams and Nelson, the American pitchers.
Six innings were played, with the Americans not batting in the sixth and allowing the Swedes to have six outs in their half of the inning.
Jim Thorpe, pictured in 1913 with the New York Giants, played in the second exhibition game.
On the next day Tuesday, 16 July 1912 in the evening, two teams composed of an all-American line-up played an exhibition match against each other. This game included Jim Thorpe, who would win two gold medals in the 1912 games (one in classic pentathlon and the other in decathlon); Thorpe, a noted college athlete, had briefly played minor league baseball in the Eastern Carolina League (which would later cause the IOC to strip him of his medals; they were reinstated in 1983, thirty years after his death) and would go on to play in MLB with the New York Giants.
^Baseball was one of various sports appearing on schedules for the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis; records or results of baseball games played during that Olympiad are lacking.
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