baseball in the olympics

[Edgy MD]

First sports dropped since 1936. Rarely a good year to invoke.

THEY'RRRE OUT! OLYMPICS DROP BASEBALL SOFTBALL Sports eliminated for 2012 Games, but could win way back in 2016 updated 12:41 a.m. ET July 9, 2005 SINGAPORE - The International Olympic Committee delivered a shocking message to baseball and softball on Friday: Yer out! The two sports were kicked out of the Olympics, unwanted by international sports officials who felt they were too American for the world sports stage. The decision, made during a secret vote in Singapore, is effective for the 2012 London Games, meaning the two sports will have a final fling at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The sports, the first eliminated since polo in 1936, are eligible to reapply for the 2016 Games. U.S. women won all three gold medals since softball joined the Olympics, at the 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens Games. American pitcher Lisa Fernandez, a three-time gold medalist, blamed the decision on IOC president Jacques Rogge. �Rogge has basically conspired against the sports to get them removed. We had done our job as a sport world wide to show we belong,� she said. �I feel one person, the president of the IOC, a person from Europe, has taken it upon himself to ruin the lives of millions, actually billions of women.� (Ed: "ruin the lives"? "billions"?) Crystl Bustos, who hit a record five homers during the 2004 Olympics, said the one-sidedness of the softball tournament should not have been used as a factor. The Americans outscored opponents 51-1. �If that did play a role in the decision, then that�s pretty pathetic,� she said. �I don�t mean to cut anybody down, but it�s supposed to be the best of the best, and if you get knocked for your excellence, then that�s just not right.� Two-time gold medal-winning infielder Dot Richardson said the Olympic dream �was ripped away from the 126 countries that play the sport of softball, that just vanished.� �I�ve always seen in athletics an anti-American sentiment throughout the world. Most of it is through jealousy or envy,� she said. �I just don�t know if this had anything to do with that.� Jennie Finch, the U.S. team�s star who pitched two shutouts in Athens, was shocked by the news. �It�s devastating and heartbreaking, all combined,� she said. �Especially because the sport�s at an all-time high right now. I know it�s devastating for the young girls. �We�re going to do all we can to get the sport back for 2016.� Baseball was a demonstration sport at the 1984 Los Angeles Games and 1988 Seoul Games and became a medal sport in 1992 at Barcelona, where Cuba won the gold. The Cubans beat Japan in the 1996 final at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, where the 32 games had an average attendance of 28,749. While professionals were first allowed to participate in 2000, major league baseball didn�t allow players on 40-man major league rosters to go. The U.S. team won the gold, led by former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda and current Milwaukee pitcher Ben Sheets, but the Americans didn�t even qualify for the Athens Games, eliminated with a 2-1 loss to Mexico in a qualifier. �I think they�ve made a big, big mistake,� Lasorda said. �Baseball is played by all countries now, and softball, too. I think that�s really going to hurt the Olympics.� Cuba won in Athens for its third gold medal in four tries. �That�s like the World Series for people here,� Chicago White Sox pitcher Jose Contreras, who played for Cuba in the 2000 Olympics, said through a translator. �Not having the Olympics will be a big hit in Cuba and for the fans in Cuba.� But for U.S. baseball players, the Olympics were less important. �There isn�t any player growing up thinking they want to play in the Olympics,� said Sheets, who won a gold medal in 2000. �That was one of my greatest moments, but it has nothing to do with the big leagues. Each of the 28 existing sports was put to a secret vote by the IOC, and baseball and softball were the only two that failed to receive a majority. The IOC then rejected adding squash and karate, which failed to get the necessary two-thirds approval. IOC officials were unhappy about the absence of major leaguers. The NBA has sent its best players since 1992 and the NHL stopped its season for 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. �The lack of the MLB players � I think people have looked and said, �Well, all right, if there�s to be a change, that seems to be the logic of it,�� British IOC member Craig Reedie said. Cuban Baseball Federation president Carlos Rodriguez took a similar view. �Those who bear most of the blame are the owners of the professional leagues who refuse to free up their ballplayers to compete,� he said. The drug-testing provisions of major league baseball�s collective bargaining agreement, which are more lax than World Anti-Doping Agency rules, were cited as a factor by Australian IOC member John Coates. �Problems with doping in U.S. baseball probably cost the sport dearly,� Coates said. Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players� Association, said the IOC�s decision �won�t affect baseball very much one way or another.� �You can�t shut down major league baseball, you just can�t do it and nobody can reasonably expect us to,� he said. �Baseball will go on just fine. It�s never depended in any way, shape or form even slightly on the Olympics.� San Diego Padres chief executive officer Sandy =#FF8000]Alderson, until April an executive vice president in the major league commissioner�s officer, traveled to Singapore this week and was surprised by the decision. Major league baseball and the players� association plan to start their own 16-nation tournament, the World Baseball Classic, next March and have a launch announcement scheduled for Monday in suburban Detroit. �Since 1990, the number of national baseball federations has grown from 60 to 122,� said Bob DuPuy, major league baseball�s chief operating officer. �By deleting baseball from its Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee has made a mistake that will adversely affect millions of sports fans worldwide.� San Francisco Giants outfielder Michael =#FF8000]Tucker, a 1992 Olympian, thought the IOC might restore the sports for 2016. �It�s just a matter of what�s popular right now,� he said. �You might see poker on there.� (ed: Holy shit! I was joking!) Dominican Baseball Federation president Hector Pereyra and Mexican Olympic Committee president Felipe Munoz intend to work toward baseball�s restoration. �This is the moment to start the race to return to the Olympic stage in 2016,� Pereyra said.

[metirish]

American pitcher Lisa Fernandez, a three-time gold medalist, blamed the decision on IOC president Jacques Rogge. �Rogge has basically conspired against the sports to get them removed. We had done our job as a sport world wide to show we belong,� she said. �I feel one person, the president of the IOC, a person from Europe, has taken it upon himself to ruin the lives of millions, actually billions of women.� (Ed: "ruin the lives"? "billions"?)

Lisa of course has been proven correct, the world has indeed fallen in to ruin and despair since Rogge went rouge on baseball/softball.

[metsmarathon]

so here's my crazy crazy way of inserting baseball into the olympics, and making it interesting for everyone.

one: baseball forgoes the all star game for the year of the olympics. you can still pick and choose your honorary all stars, but there's no game.

two: players are "drafted" by the various nations, to fill out a full roster, plus a significant level of alternates; no more than X (maybe 3, maybe 5) number of players may be taken from a given major league team, worldwide (i assume it will be somewhat unlikely for the best player from X different nations to be all on the same team). this plays into three & four.

three: the game shuts down for a week. one week, not two. (i assume the olympic baseball tournaments will last the full two weeks of the olympics.)

four: the first week of the olympics is the round-robin phase of the tournament.

four(a): players on teams who are eliminated from teh tournament are free to return to their major league teams after elimination.

four(: mlb teams whose players continue to play in the olympics may replace those players with any player from any level of their organization. those players may be added to the 40-man roster if needed, and if sent down upon the return of the olympian, may be removed from teh 40-man roster without consequence, and the team will not have used up an option year to do so.

four©: unless it wasn't obvious, major league baseball starts up after the first week. all players return to their teams by the end of the second week.

five: surely, there will be protections against the overuse of pitchers. i expect the slate of games will be less demanding than the regular season schedule, so while hte top players will be in heated compettion, they will likely be getting more days off than they would otherwise, and might return better rested.

six: if major league teams are willing to sacrifice their best sluggers for the spectacle that is the home run contest, then surely playing actual baseball games should be not quite so anathema.

seven: figure out a way for the USOC to throw a chunk of money at MLB to make it happen. make it part of a campaign to legitimize hte WBC. something. whatever.

am i crazy? yes. will anyone go for it? no, probably not. i expect to be roundly derided on these here pages. but i think it would wor, and be interesting. and convoluted and quirky enough to generate self-sustaining interest.

[Frayed Knot]

- As I've stated before around here, the Olympics is best IMO at those sports where the Olympics is that sport's biggest moment. That means track, that means swimming, gymnastics, even volleyball. But it doesn't mean tennis, and it doesn't mean soccer, and it doesn't mean baseball. Hell, I was more upset that they took out womens softball.

- And, yes, the main reason it went away is because the IOC is a European-dominated entity backed by a U.N.-style bushel of smaller countries who all have votes of their own, who closed down baseball because it doesn't have broad enough appeal to enough countries. It has nothing specifically to do with MLB or NBC

- The difficulties in getting everyone on board for the WBC shows how tough it would be to get the best players into an out-of-league tourney even before you start turning over the running of it to the IOC. In the WBC there are still arguments on where it should be held, how often it should be held, at what time of year it should be held, and finally there's IF it should even be held at all. Heck, half the Yanqui roster suddenly discovers an injury at WBC time, and if you left the decision up to Keith he'd cancel the whole thing and attempt to brainwash those who ever thought about it in the first place so it could never be resurrected. And do you thing you're getting Strasburg to pitch? I don't think so.



In short, I'm fine without it being there and I don't see the benefit to either MLB or the IOC in concocting a way to match them up.

[metsmarathon]

well fine then.

i actually think a decent way for it to work would be to open it up to minor leaguers, for whom stricter drug policies could be emplaced and without which the major league teams could carry on for two weeks at a time.

carry over hte same 40-man protections as i mentioned earlier, and also maybe throw in the limitation on the number of players allowed off of any given team, to give hte major league clubs some level of protection, and i think you might have the start of something.

it would more closely mirror the under-23 thing soccer is doing, and which basketball may be moving towards as well.

[Edgy MD]

There's another way of looking at it though. The Olympics are best in sports where the Olympics is that sport's biggest international moment. In that, the likes of basketball still qualifies, and baseball could also.

Tennis, golf, and soccer regularly compete on an international platform. (I'd be more interested in introducing those sports, and track especially, into a city-vs.-city domestic league format similar to MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL.) Basketball and baseball, not so much.

I have no problem with MLB shutting down for two weeks for an Olympic tournament, if the athletes entered in earnest. If it's as half-hearted as the WBC, then no.

[G-Fafif]

Out on a limb idea: make Olympic baseball a winter sport. Of course it would have to played in a different locale than the winter Olympics, such as Florida or Arizona. The players don't have a conflict (just like the NBA and European players don't have a conflict right now). It sounds crazy to have an event in a different location (and would the players want to give up a month of their off-season to train?), but it's better than shutting down MLB and certainly better than Bud's WBC which forces MLB players into a competitive environment after only a week or two of practice.

Don't know enough about available venues, but if you had a big enough indoor stadium -- a SkyDome type of deal -- in the vicinity of all the skating, maybe winter baseball would work.

Sochi, Russia, you have your assignment.

[Frayed Knot]

The winter olympics actually has a rule where every event needs to have something to do with either snow or ice, so that knocks out baseball unless some really interesting rule alterations are made.
And that winter/summer thing is part of what makes basketball, and specifically the use of pro players, a much easier fit for the olympics; it's a winter sport here but a summer sport to the IOC.

[G-Fafif]

Substitute snowballs for baseballs, bam!

[batmagadanleadoff]

Bam!

[Frayed Knot]

I was thinking of a flooded outfield and players with mitts on skates.
Lonnie Smith can coach.

[Guest Swan Swan H]

[Edgy MD]

The winter olympics actually has a rule where every event needs to have something to do with either snow or ice, so that knocks out baseball unless some really interesting rule alterations are made. And that winter/summer thing is part of what makes basketball, and specifically the use of pro players, a much easier fit for the olympics; it's a winter sport here but a summer sport to the IOC.

Introducing the coaches for the 2016 Baseball Olympic Tournament:

[Guest Swan Swan H]

Snippet of conversation with my son at last night's game:

"If baseball was still in the Olympics, Jason Bay would have trouble making the Canadian team."
"At this point, he'd have trouble making the Iranian team."