Baseball, Mom, & Apple Pie

Did you catch the news? Last week the IOC voted to drop both Baseball and Softball from the summer Olympics starting with the 2012 games in London. Nice.

The coverage says that the sports were dropped for a couple of reasons. Principally, softball was dropped because the USA was too dominant and because there wasn't as much growth in participation from other parts of the world as they thought there should have been. Baseball was dropped because the US MLB would not make their players available to the games, and because the sport has a cloud over it because of doping.

Bullshit.

Along with this story we find that in the entire history of the modern Olympics only one other sport has ever been dropped - and no, it wasn't team handball. The only sport dropped to date was polo, at least that's what NPR said. The Olympics site says there were more, including:

• Cricket
• Power boating
• Croquet
• Rackets
• Golf
• Rink-hockey
• Jeu de paume
• Roque
• Lacrosse
• Rugby
• Pelote basque
• Tug of war
• Polo
• Water skiing

Quite a list. My understanding is that many of these were not really recurring sports in the first place, and others were part of a bigger sport. Tug of War was part of Track and Field (I always thought it was "tug-o-war." Learn something new every day). Bonus points for anyone who can explain all of those sports without looking them up.

Olympic power boating. Let's not draw too much attention to that or the NASCAR people will start angling for a stock car medal.

Supposedly the vote was part of a new vetting process whereby they will make every sport clear this hurdle every four years to continue to be in the games. Again, I direct you to sports not dropped this year like badminton, team handball, field hockey, modern pentathlon, and ping pong.

Along with the dropping of these two sports, the IOC also decided not to recognize squash, rugby, golf, karate and roller sports. While upset about the first action, the Ultimate player in me is just fine with the second.

Here's the rub though. I personally think this had nothing to do with sports, and even less to do with the Olympic Summer Games. The reasons they give fall apart too easily.

So what if the US team was dominant in Softball? Does anyone remember the Russian Hockey team - the one who's loss elicited the quote "Do you believe in miracles?" How about Dream Team 1? Nobody clambered to eliminate Basketball when Charles Barkley spent the entire tournament hanging from the rim and Chuck Daly never even called a single time out. Dominance has never been a factor in the past, why would it be now?

There aren't enough other teams? A sport has to be played in a specified number of countries before it is even considered as a demonstration sport. Its not as if bunches of countries have stopped playing since Atlanta. Besides, just having a sport in the Olympics is probably the biggest possible boost to its play around the world. Need we look farther than the Jamaican Bobsled Team for confirmation of that? Nobody ever considers canceling the entire Winter Olympic Games because it never even snows in a boatload of countries.

Didn't have the best players? Since when has this been a criteria? For most of my life I always thought that the best players turned pro, and that if you were pro you couldn't compete in the Olympics. I know this has been changing over the last four or five games, but it is certainly not the rule. Even with the NBA and other federations allowing their players to go most of the very top echelon pass up the opportunity in the same way they pass up the all-star game. They're either afraid of getting injured or they have to film a commercial that week. NHL players would rather go to the Canada Cup than to the Olympics. The top pro tennis players don't go routinely. This is a sham.

There's a cloud of impropriety over American Baseball because of performance enhancing drugs? And this is a reason for canceling baseball in the Olympics? I can't think of a better reason to have Baseball in the Olympics. Give the players that aren't juicing a stage to excel on under IOC anti-doping regulations that MLB won't enforce. See who shows up.

The decisions to drop these sports were just stupid. They were anti-development, anti-progressive, and anti-sportsmanship. What on Earth would make them do such a thing?

Here's what I think...

I think in a purely democratic process, with secret balloting, in a high profile environment, with almost zero international repercussions the rest of the world took what must have seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity to tell the United States of America to go fuck itself.

There is almost nothing as identifiably American than Baseball. What does James Earl Jones say in Field of Dreams?

"The rest of the world has gone by like an army of steamrollers It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time."

Right up there with Mom and apple pie as a symbol of the USA is Baseball. And starting in 2012 it will no longer be part of the Olympics - Men's or Women's. Let's do see the decision for what it really is: a show of force from a group of countries we typically trample without thinking about it.

It's going to backfire though, not enough to get them re-instated, but there will be significant collateral damage.

Dropping Women's Softball will be a real kick in the teeth to the continuing building up of women's sports, and frankly women's rights around the world. The women playing that game were spectacular. They were healthy, athletic, good looking, smart, and succeeding at sports. The image was undeniably one of women's success, strength, and independence, and one that was staggeringly good TV. Around the world, men trying to keep structures in place that keep women down would have to watch and shake their heads. Certainly women's soccer has a similar effect, except in that case men can feel safe that the men's team would undoubtedly whomp the women's team head to head. With softball, there always was this bit of wonder if it really mattered who was standing at the plate, the pitching is just unhitable. This is a terrible blow to the development of women's sports. Often times there are dominos that fall as far as recognition by other bodies that defer to Olympic status. This gives other organizations to marginalize the sport as well.

There aren't enough teams from other parts of the world? That's because in many of those places they are too busy mutilating girls genitals, keeping them out of site in beekeeper suits, or pitching them into the river before they can walk. And the decision to drop this sport is just one more small reinforcement of what they are doing. Congratulations.

The Baseball backfire? The US didn't even qualify for Baseball in the last Olympics. They lost to Mexico in the final qualifying round. American Baseball has historically been dominated by Cuba. So by taking Baseball out of the Olympics the IOC pulled the rug out from under several Latin American and Asian teams that took real national pride in their performance in that sport on the world stage. Well done.

Plus, this was a real opportunity for the IOC to help wear away some of the tarnish on its own reputation. If the IOC had continued to support Baseball, but insist on IOC doping rules they really would have had the high ground. Cutting the sport almost makes it look like a solution to the drug problem in the sport is impossible like "well if they can't take drugs we won't see the best baseball." What kind of crap is that? There was a chance to force real change and they passed it up. Good show.

So good for you, IOC, you gave the world's only remaining superpower a black eye. We'll likely wear it with our normal level of whining. Baseball will continue to mark the time. A vote like this can't possibly impede an army of steamrollers. Being dropped from the Olympics will only make MLB's upcoming world cup that much more important. Softball will take a hit, but maybe this will be enough to get some money behind a professional league here in the US. And as far as the drug reform and the building of women's sports, well I hope making us feel bad was worth it.