Sports: Baseball’s Olympic banishment

Picking between Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro as host of the 2016 Games is not the only major decision facing the International Olympic Committee this year. The ‘Lords of the Rings’ will also choose between seven sports seeking an Olympic showcase starting in 2016.

There are only two new spots available in the Olympic family and baseball, once a prized member, will be competing with six other sports — softball, golf, rugby sevens, roller sports, squash and karaoke — to land one.

Uh, make that last one karate, not karaoke. But the truth is that baseball has so irritated the Olympic brass that it won’t beat out any of those other sports and probably couldn’t even beat karaoke in a vote. It is hard to imagine any sport doing more to seal its own banishment from the Olympics.

Baseball, which has been an official part of the Games since 1992, has already been booted from the Olympic lineup for London 2012 so it is actually seeking reinstatement. The IOC was so angry at the baseball establishment that, as almost an afterthought, it kicked out softball too, unfairly perceiving it as nothing more than women’s baseball.

But softball, having courted the IOC voters and put on a stellar show in Beijing, has a good shot at a second chance. So when the international baseball federation suggested that the two sports unite and make a joint proposal for reinstatement, the ladies’ game wisely demurred, not wanting to be saddled with all the hardball baggage.

Baseball has been having just the kind of spring that confirms every IOC concern, particularly about a Major League Baseball drug-testing program that doesn’t approach Olympic standards.

The sport is enduring another string of major embarrassments: Alex Rodriguez’s admission of drug use; Barry Bonds upcoming perjury trial relating to steroids use, Roger Clemens reportedly facing indictment for lying to Congress about his steroids use, Miguel Tejada pleading guilty for lying to federal investigators in another steroids matter; and a burgeoning drug and financial scandal involving MLB prospects in the Dominican Republic. Is it any wonder that the IOC thinks good riddance and none too soon?

Of course, the disagreement over drugs was not really the most contentious matter between the Olympics and baseball. While the IOC was clearly distressed about baseball’s failure to police itself more effectively, it was even more upset that Major League Baseball refused to send its most illustrious players, including some of those drug cheats, to play in the Olympics.

Baseball has taken an almost singular approach. Most major sports and sports leagues have been thrilled to be a part of the Olympics. The NHL as well as the professional tennis tours interrupt their seasons every four years to showcase their stars in an Olympic tournament.

Soccer won’t create an Olympic tournament to rival its own World Cup, but Beijing still saw stars like Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho on the pitch. And no league has taken better advantage of the Olympic stage than the NBA. It saw the world cheer the American “Dream Team” in Barcelona then cheer even louder as, just a dozen years later, the dream turned into a nightmare in Athens.

Of course, the Olympics is something of a no-brainer for the NBA; basketball is cast as part of the Summer Games and, while requiring some sacrifices by individual players, is competed long before NBA training camps open. Major League Baseball doesn’t have that option. And MLB has steadfastly refused to disrupt its season and has instead opted to dispatch minor leaguers to the Olympics.

Only the most ardent baseball fan would have recognized any of the names from the U.S. baseball team that took the bronze medal in Beijing. The result has been a second-class affair — a baseball ticket is always one of the easiest “gets” at the Games — bringing no glory to the Olympics or the sport.

So baseball was both recognizing its inevitable Olympic fate and sealing it when, in 2006, it launched its own World Baseball Classic. The WBC was exactly the tournament the Olympics had always coveted. The national lineups were replete with the biggest names in the game — A-Rod, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens, Chipper Jones, Albert Pujols, Big Papi, Johan Santana, Ivan Rodriguez, Jake Peavy — and the result was a thrilling competition.

Most of those thrills came at the expense of the U.S. and Dominican teams, which were essentially a pair of baseball “Dream Teams." Neither reached the finals. The final was a great advertisement, if not for Major League Baseball then for the game itself. It matched two teams, Japan and Cuba, that were short on star power but long on fundamentals and team cohesion. Japan won the inaugural WBC, assuring that its star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka would soon become both rich and famous with the Boston Red Sox.

The second World Baseball Classic opens in Japan Thursday and will conclude with the championship game on March 23rd in Los Angeles. In only its second go-round, the tournament is beginning to show some frayed edges. Most of the players, or at least those in the majors here, are not in game shape this early in the baseball calendar. As a result the ball games bear too much of a resemblance to spring-training exhibitions with pitchers taking only short stints on the mound and batters off in their timing.

After indulging MLB brass the first time around, teams are now using any excuse to keep a player with a nick or a bruise from participating. One after another, big stars — particularly pitchers with their fragile arms — have been scratched from their various national rosters. Still, the WBC has its virtues. After all, it is the tournament the Olympics could only dream of. And now it is the only major international baseball tournament we are likely ever to get.

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