RAPID CITY - Crystl Bustos is to international softball what Barry Bonds is to Major League Baseball - home-run royalty.

The two-time Olympic gold medalist has made short work of opposing pitchers' best stuff during Team USA's Bound 4 Beijing Tour.

In a sport typically dominated by pitching, she is hitting .466 with 23 home runs and 81 RBI in a mere 131 plate appearances. Those stats, pro-rated over the length of a typical Major League Baseball 162-game season, would result in numbers even Bonds would find humbling - 105 home runs and 360 RBI.

The slugger headlines a Team USA squad that has hit 112 home runs and has scored nearly 650 runs in winning 53-of-54 games on the Bound 4 Beijing Tour.

Bustos, along with her Team USA teammates, will be in Rapid City on Tuesday to face the Black Hills Gold, a select team of South Dakota all stars, at Pete Lien Field. The game is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

Bustos, a Canyon County, Calif., native, credits her uncle, Jesse Rios, with developing her interest and teaching her the game, dating back to when he presented her with her first glove at the age of 3. After graduating from Palm Beach Community College in 1998, Bustos quickly became a fixture on the USA national softball teams. Her accomplishments include playing on the 2000 and 2004 gold-medal winning teams and on two World Championship teams. Individually, she holds the Olympic Games' home run record of five, set during 2004 Athens Olympics.

Bustos said her fondest memory is of the 2000 Olympic team when Team USA bounced back from the verge of elimination to win the gold medal with a 2-1 extra inning victory over Japan.

"We lost three games and looked like we might be out of it," Bustos said. "And then we came back and won it all, it was an awesome experience."

Bustos led her team with 10 hits and three home runs during the Games.

Bustos said she is just enjoying her experience and doesn't try to live up to others' expectations of her.

"I just play my game. I try to keep it humble and play one game at a time, one pitch at a time and do whatever the team needs at a particular time," she said. "A lot of times I'm not looking to get myself to first as much as moving runners into scoring position or driving them in, one way or another."

The Bound 4 Beijing Tour has taken the team to sometimes out-of-the way places like Sulphur, La., Ridgeland, Miss., Bowie, Md., and Las Cruces, N.M. Bustos said she finds the travel tiring but enjoys the thrill of playing before sold-out crowds. And while the individual attention is nice, she sees a greater mission served by the publicity created by the tour - to see softball reinstated as an Olympic sport.

"As athletes if we keep playing the sport as it should be played, it will definitely help to spread the sport and get people involved," she said. "We hope that the people on the selection committee truly watch the game before they vote it out."

When not participating with Team USA, Bustos devotes much of her time to the operation of two organizations - Los Angeles-based Bustos Elite and Cincinnati-based Bustos Ultimate - which she has created as a means through which disadvantaged kids can utilize sports as an incentive to educational advancement.

"We reach out to overlooked kids and draw them into sports and utilize that training to further their education," she said.

Beyond the Olympics, Bustos sees herself playing for a few more years - professionally with the Akron Racers of the National Pro Fastpitch league - then devoting her time to helping kids.

"Some part of me really wants to help kids like my uncle, Jesse Rios, did for me," Bustos said.