In a few days we get to rally together as a country to cheer on our American athletes during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The Summer Olympics have introduced us to household names like Cassius Clay, Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis, Mary Lou Retton, Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps, Mark Spitz and the list goes on and on. For sports fans, it’s a great time to express national pride while coming together to be reminded that perseverance and determination can lead to great things.<\/p>\n
Although the games will prove to be an exciting couple of weeks and will undoubtedly introduce us to many great new athletes, we won’t have are any great stories regarding baseball. Which leads us to the question – why did Americas Pastime get dropped from the Olympics this year?<\/p>\n
The International Olympic Committee made the decision to drop baseball and softball from the 2012 and 2016 program, with the possibility of bringing them back in 2020. There are a few reasons why this has happened.<\/p>\n
Baseball and softball suffer from a lack of universal appeal. Although baseball continues to be popular in the Americas and Eastern Asia, there’s not much of an interest from European countries. A significant amount of the International Olympic Committee members are European. Combine this with the cap of 28 events and an increasing list of other sports trying to get inclusion, something had to give.<\/p>\n
For softball, our complete dominance didn’t help. 2008 was the only year we didn’t win the gold since the sport had been introduced into the games. Without any level of parity, softball quickly lost international support. Baseball actually had a decent level of competition (since MLBs schedule is not conducive to participation). With baseball, however, the inclusion of professionals would actually help our case (parity or not) since the popularity of the players would most likely increase viewership.<\/p>\n
The NHL shuts the league down for two weeks to accommodate the Winter Olympics. Don’t expect this to happen with the Summer Olympics and baseball in 2020 as Bud Selig continues to prefer pushing his World Baseball Classic (at least for now). The next one is in 2013.<\/p>\n
Although it would be great to see our professionals or our top amateur baseball prospects compete in the Olympic Games, at least we still have major league baseball in its current form. We’ll also get to enjoy all of the other great events the Summer Olympics have to offer. This year’s newest additions are golf and rugby sevens. Enjoy!<\/p>\n
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