Former Cardinal corner infielder John Gall ‘00 was selected to represent the United States at the Olympic Games in Beijing yesterday. Gall will become the seventh Olympian associated with Stanford baseball, a list that also includes current Cardinal head coach Mark Marquess, who managed the 1988 Olympic team on its way to a gold medal in Seoul, South Korea.

Gall will make the trip to Beijing as an outfielder. Currently with the Florida Marlins organization, playing for Triple-A Albuquerque, Gall is batting .321 this season with 11 home runs. The former Stanford standout is still eligible for the Olympic squad, despite seeing limited action in the big leagues with St. Louis in 2005 and 2006 and with Florida in 2007. In 53 career major-league at bats, Gall has hit .245 with a pair of homers.

On the Farm from 1997 to 2000, Gall earned First-Team All Pac-10 Honors three times and earned high rankings on several Stanford career leaderboards, statistically. Gall ranks first overall in Stanford history for career hits with 356, doubles with 80 and RBI with 263. He also holds the third-best career batting average (.358) and is tied for third all-time with 46 homers.

This will not be Gall’s first time on the international stage, either, as the former Cardinal slugger played for the U.S. in the summers of 1998 and 1999. He performed admirably at that level as well, racking up averages of .371 and .352 in those stints with the national team, respectively.

Team USA missed the cut for the 2004 Olympics, having last competed in 2000 in Sydney, where the squad took home the gold. The Olympic baseball action this year in Beijing is scheduled to run Aug. 13-23. The competition in Beijing may be baseball’s last appearance on the Olympic stage, as the event is currently slated to be dropped from the games beginning in 2012.