IOC drops a pair of sports

[thebin]

For the first time since 1936, the IOC eliminated a Summer Olympic sport. Actually a pair of them. There are a load of ridiculously un-popular "sports" in the Summer games. So what did the IOC can? Steeplechase? Synchronized swimming? Rythmic Gymnastics? Biathalon? Surely doubles Ping Pong? Nope. Baseball. And Softball. Americans don't medal in Steeplechase it seems. Being either the 3rd or 4th most popular team sport on Earth wasn't enough for the most American of Olympic sports to hang in there I guess.

[nychoya3]

Yeah, but now baseball is going to have a world cup with actual major leaguers. Throw in the steroid stuff surrounding baseball, and I can totally buy the decision even without talking about some conspiracy to hurt the USA. Also, they need to build a pretty big dedicated facility for baseball, as opposed to synchronized swimming or whatever, and a facility that most countries have no real use for after hosting the games. Baseball never belonged in the olympics to begin with, and I'd probably say the same thing about soccer too.

I don't really care much about softball, but I think the Americans outscored their competitors 50-1 or something in Athens. It's not just the US winning - it's that no one else plays the sport seriously except for us. Incidently, it's around the least watchable sport I've ever seen in my entire life. Still, I'm surprised softball got nixed. I guess it means we'll see less of Jenny Finch, which is, of course, a shame.

[thebin]

You must be referring to the nascent "World Cup of baseball" which is so far from established that only a few weeks ago the Japanese were on the verge of ignoring it for domestic league concerns? The same tournament that will probably never be as big as the old Canada Cup of hockey? Or even the FIBA Worlds championships? Or the Tour de France? Or the Boston Marathon? Or the Henley Royal Regatta? The heavyweight championships of the world brought to you by Mandalay Bay and the King of Beers? Or dare I say it, something called the WORLD CUP? These are all Olympic sports my man, and the Olympic forms of them are all far from the pinnacle.

I read that doping line of argument from some Australian IOC member Friday who was quite pathetically trying to float the steroid thing as a possible excuse and all I can say is....what a steaming hot load of horsehit. Do you realize that a sport like track and field absolutely swamps a sport like baseball in doping prevalence? I mean NOT EVEN CLOSE. Weightlifting? Cycling? Even swimming. All of these traditional Olympic sports are well known to insiders to be overwhelmed by myriad forms of juice, and for many decades so. If sports were space exploration, Olympic sprinters and weightlifters and cyclists and their coaches/trainers would be NASA and baseball players are those dudes who want to privately launch themselves into space using vacuum parts. Beyond the sophistication of Olympic sports and their doping medicine, its a question of mere prevalence. I would bet no more than 10 or 15% of MLB players have ever seen an illegal performance enhancer. World class sprinters? 50% easy. I have some knowledge of the underground world of performance enhancing drugs and all I can say is I am always amused how ignorant otherwise intelligent people are of which sports are juiced up and how much they are.

No major leaguersin Olympic baseball? Yeah, and? Basketball didn't have them from the 1920s until 1992. It was still always one of the premier if not THE premier team sport of the summer games. Ice Hockey? Ditto. In fact hockey was unequivocally the biggest team sport of the winter games played almost exclusively by second and third tier national teams with only one exception- just like Cuba in baseball. Soccer?? SOCCER!!!!! Olympic soccer is not even one of the 3 or 4 most significant soccer tournaments in the world.


They needed a "pretty big dedicated facility for baseball?" They merely needed to (and in fact they merely did) throw up Texas high school football-sized bleachers for 10,000 fans, oh what a crushing burden for a country that will spend more money on a single Games than they will for national defense in a decade. In Olympic economics, a tiny baseball stadium ain't nothing, and will get far more use than so many other "traditional" Olympic sports venues that must be built that have little to no audience at all. They build train systems for the summer games. We are talking about some friggen bleachers. That stadium in Athens was not even a nice AAA park and it was fine. Come on, they build many facilities for sports that relative to baseball NOBODY PLAYS OR WATCHS for the Olympics, its what hosting the games is all about.


Now in regard to softball, I feel very differently. It is a bogus international sport, in a title IX "let's pretend there is demand" sort of way, that never belonged in the games because its hardly played anywhere outside of the US. (But to play devil's advocate, can't you say the same just about for a sport like Tae Kwan Doe or Badmitton with regards to there being little depth in the medals? Isn't Ping Pong a medal sport now?) You just cannot remotely say that about baseball- where the US has only won gold once and is not even in the top 3 for medals I don't think. I suppose the only bigtime team sport more ill-suited to a major international form than softball is football. The real kind.

No matter what anyone here says, I will go to my grave KNOWING this secret anonymous vote was in some way motivated by latent anti-Americanism in a body that (absurdly) is half-European. But the really sad thing is its not going to hurt the 450 million people of the US and Japan. Olympic baseball has never been the height of the game. And so it is and has been with many other Olympic sports not as popular worldwide baseball. But baseball is associated with America as much as the hot dog, and I just know that played a role here. What this really amounts to is an "F.U." to many of the poorer nations in the world at the same time though. Its really a shiv in the heart of the Caribbean sports fans, a region with very few other Olympic aspirations outside a few sprinters who often train and live in North America. There are a lot of small nations in the Caribbean and Latin America that just got a swift kick to the juevos. I bet there are more people right now living in the tiny Dominican Republic who have played baseball than there are people in the history of the world who have synchronized swam. Remember that when you are watching COMPLETELY FABRICATED BULLSHNIT like synchronized swimming and "rhythmic" gymnastics. ("Rhythmic Gymnastics" by the way is Romanian for "you sucked too much at regular gymnastics but the 13 year-old girls in shiny costumes seems to pull good ratings so let's make something up out of thin air." Yes, Romanian is an economic language indeed.)

Am I steamed about this? VERY MUCH SO. Which I guess is obvious. But I am sorry nychoya3- your arguments, while the boilerplate of the IOC brass at the moment while delegations from Puerto Rico and Venezuela and Panama and Taiwan and South Korea and the DR lay stunned, are utter dog and I have a feeling on some level you know it. I mean let's not forget that the last sport eliminated was polo in FDR's first term! So why baseball? Why now? Why not eliminate it with a dozen others? Just softball??? Maybe you were just arguing for arguments sake, a sin I surely have committed. But come on. They should eliminate A WHOLE TON of "sports" from the Games, but baseball, the 3rd or 4th most popular team sport on Earth, is not one of them.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

Isn't trampolining also an olympic summer sport? And also last time I checked its not so much an American sport as an Americas sport - i.e. Cuba, all of Caribbean, Latin America - can't say I'm surprised that an organization that has never held an olympiad in Latin America (other than Mexico City) would look it over. I mean you've got to look at the fact that cricket and rugby getting voted out as slaps in the face to commonwealth countries as well - its simply a fact that Asian and Continental European support is needed for something to be acknowledged as a support and baseball had niether of those.

[thebin]

Baseball has plenty of Asian support. More so than rugby does now or even soccer did 30 years ago. Baseball is AT WORST, the 4th most popular team game in the world, and 4th only because the Subcontinent is so over-populated (but how many of India and Pakistan's destitute really enjoy cricket? I don't know, but I'll give it third place behind soccer and hoops for now.) Baseball is still THE sport in the richest nation in Asia in Japan, as well as Taiwan (free China) as well as arguably South Korea- which has a high quality professional league. It should have been quite clear from my post that I don't consider baseball to be an exclusively American game, far from it, but was rather indicating that the false perception of that from Samaranch's minions in Geneva may have been the biggest reason baseball was so unceremoniously and quietly jettisoned. By the way, Rogge at first asked to have a show of hands on the vote so there might be some accountabilty for who voted and how, and was booed so it became an anonymous vote instead as is this stange bodies custom. An international baseball official say that many voters obviously lied about their support to his face and then voted to nix it because the vote was a secret one and nobody could be held accountable to the hundreds of millions of baseball fans worldwide.

[Cambridge]

thebin said:

Baseball has plenty of Asian support. More so than rugby does now or even soccer did 30 years ago. Baseball is AT WORST, the 4th most popular team game in the world, and 4th only because the Subcontinent is so over-populated (but how many of India and Pakistan's destitute really enjoy cricket? I don't know, but I'll give it third place behind soccer and hoops for now.) Baseball is still THE sport in the richest nation in Asia in Japan, as well as Taiwan (free China) as well as arguably South Korea- which has a high quality professional league. It should have been quite clear from my post that I don't consider baseball to be an exclusively American game, far from it, but was rather indicating that the false perception of that from Samaranch's minions in Geneva may have been the biggest reason baseball was so unceremoniously and quietly jettisoned. By the way, Rogge at first asked to have a show of hands on the vote so there might be some accountabilty for who voted and how, and was booed so it became an anonymous vote instead as is this stange bodies custom. An international baseball official say that many voters obviously lied about their support to his face and then voted to nix it because the vote was a secret one and nobody could be held accountable to the hundreds of millions of baseball fans worldwide.

Baseball & softball are non-existant in Europe and Africa...that pretty much doomed them. I mean, honestly, the Olympics are Europe's baby...do you think they want sports that they simply don't compete in?

[thebin]

"the Olympics are Europe's baby...do you think they want sports that they simply don't compete in? "


I would say that perhaps half of Olympic (SUMMER) sports meet that definition. Baseball isn't non-existent in places like Italy by the way (or Holland), where its actually played professionally. Baseball is probably as popular (or as unpopular if you prefer) as half of the Olympics sports are in southern Europe, but that is besides the point. Get rid of ping pong and judo and taekwondo and then we'll talk.

By the way, its worth noting that they will give out 3 baseball medals in Bejing for the final time. They will also hand out 12 medals in ping pong, 24 in taekwando and 42 in the ancient European preserve of judo.

Softball is a different story. It never should have been made an Olympic sport. It just has no international reach. But baseball is without a doubt a top 5 sport interntionally by the numbers and spans Asia as well as Latin America and the Caribbean.

I know well that baseball is not very popular in Europe, but your characterization of "non-existent" is demonstrably false. Wouldn't you say if a sport exists on a professional level in a country, it has legitimacy of a signficant sort?

www.baseball-softball.it/

www.knbsb.com/

[Cambridge]

I think you missed my point...I'm agreeing with you. I'm saying that was the justification...even if it is questionable at best.

[SFHoya99]

The Netherlands has a good baseball team.

It's pretty obvious. Baseball is not overwhelmingly popular, but the IOC loves to stick it to the US. If the Olympics were really basing sports on popularity, baseball may be gone, but so would a good 1/3 of Olympic Sports.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

The Netherlands has a good baseball team because they still hold their caribbean territories as a part of their national territory (think of what the US team would look like if Pureto Rican baseball players were on the US national team) and hence get Andruw Jones and friends on their team.

[thebin]

sfhoya99 said:

If the Olympics were really basing sports on popularity, baseball may be gone, but so would a good 1/3 of Olympic Sports.

That is such an understatement I'd almost call it false. Baseball is more popular than literally 90% of the medal sports, not a mere third. There is just no doubt about this. Just by adding up the number of fans in the US and Japan you have a more popular sport than well over half the summer sports enjoy. So if its pure popularity, this is even more egregious.

Perhaps what you meant was baseball isn't very popular in Europe. Well if the IOC is to be taken at its word, that doesn't mean squat. Its not the EOC, its the IOC. And there are certainly many medals given out in asian dominated sports in the martial arts, a ton of medals actually. Even the marquee summer games of swimming (dominated by US and Aus for a while) and track & field (domnated by US and Rus in Athens) are I assure you less popular world-wide than baseball by any objective standard. Its a slippery slope indeed to try to decide which sports are "real Olympic" sports and which should be left out of the Olympics. It suffices to say I would have seen this as a rather reasonable move if baseball was jettisoned along with soccer and tennis and ice hockey, etc. I would never have watched the games again, but the smell of it all would have been more pleasant.

[Cambridge]

Let's be honest...does it really shock anyone that integrity and IOC are seldom bedmates? They make the world's boxing associations look like the Vatican conclave...graft, bribery, corruption, nepotism, name your poison...they are a wasteland of corruption thinly veiled with vulgar pomposity.

[Deleted]

sports.espn.go.com/oly/news/story?id=2106480

Not that they had any of it to begin with, but the IOC lost all respect from me. Apparently they will only let baseball back in if MLB allows its players to go. Roggue or whatever his name is wants the best in the world. Why, Jacques? Better raitings? Better sponsors? So much for moving away from the disgusting commercialism of the Atlanta games, eh? Hate how "Americanized" the Games have become? Then let the amateurs play, jerky.

Otherwise you're just furthering the "exploitation" of the once noble Olympics or whatever it is you and your cronies whine about.

[thebin]

Honestly the IOC can go screw themselves. Their inflated sense of self-worth rivals that of Hollywood. They run a two week tournament every four years. That's not quite 4 days per year. MLB is the heir to the oldest professional sports league in the world, has 30 some odd teams playing 162 games per year, and the IOC is going to tell baseball it must decimate the teams by taking its all stars in August? AUGUST? The doping crap makes me so mad I could scream. Typical Olympic sports like track, weightlifting, cycling, and swimming have been riddled, and I mean thouroughly, with rapant doping for DECADES. The IOC getting on MLB's back for doping is like Nebraska getting Editeded at Colorado for being so flat and boring. What balls on that friggen group. To hell with them. They Olympics are a joke now. I would love to see the NBA and NHL pullout in response right now.

[thebin]

"Let's be honest...does it really shock anyone that integrity and IOC are seldom bedmates? "

No it doesn't shock me Cambridge. But I am surprised to see how little fanfare this has received in the American media. I know why, because Americans don't make for good victims in the world court of public opinion, and because Olympic baseball was strangled in its infancy- before anyone really cared. But it doesn't make it right. But no, I am not shocked, but that doesn't mitigate my anger trythfully. Nor my annoyance that nobody in the USOC seems to have spoken up about it very vociferously. But then I imagine the USOC is stacked with Olympic-type sport people who were never eager for the big American sports to invade their two weeks worth of territory every four years.

[Cambridge]

Exactly, the USOC wants the TV time spent on track and field, swimming, etc....as far as those nepotistic lemings are concerned baseball gets it's "due" during the rest of the year anyways, why take the spotlight from the glory and majesty of the track and field events.

I mean with all baseball's doping scandals...it is refreshing to watch real professional dopers show the baseball players a trick or two.

The IOC and USOC is such a feudal system of favors and insider dealings that I'm not surprised at all at what has happened.

I agree that your anger is warranted and I would be beside you on the barricades...but I tire of the olympics and their faux virtues. They bore me with their nostalgic panderings, archaic sports and ridiculous arrogance.

They should learn something from the World Cup...that's how you throw a international competition every four years. Talk about passion. Talk about nationalism. Talk about skill.

Sorry, but I find it hard to believe that anyone gets really gets excited about the Olympics besides the atheletes involved. Too much archery, karate, gymnastics, equestrian, fencing, badminton, racketball....do I have to go on...or have you all fallen asleep?

[nychoya3]

I like the olympics, but the pomp, circumstance, and general self-importance of the event is grating. I actually much prefer to watch something like badminton than olympic baseball. How much baseball did you see on the 2004 telecast? I don't remember much at all. It's long, boring, with players you've never heard of. They play baseball 8 months of the year in the majors, and that pretty much fills up my baseball quota.

You list gymnastics, and I certainly agree that gymnastics suck, but you see it far more often on television than olympic baseball, and I suspect that's because the ratings are just better. There's very, very little interest in baseball in the olympics, and that's because olympic baseball is second rate and played by a reletively small number of countries. Yeah, I'd dump rythmic gymanstics too, but that doesn't mean baseball ever had a place in the games.

The IOC is corrupt, through and through. I just can't imagine why you care so much.

[thebin]

"The IOC is corrupt, through and through. I just can't imagine why you care so much. "

That closing thought has two parts nychoya3. I agree with the first part but must say it seems greatly at odds with your original response that you thought this was reasonable move for a few reasons. The second part of the statement is the kind that always bugged me on message board such as this. Its just completely un-necessary. You don't feel strongly about this issue? Fine. But why act "surprised" that some else feels differently? Just don't respond if you don't care. It seems so pointless on a miscellaneous message board to chime in to essentially say "why chime in here?" Its seems to me you are trying to change your tune to something very different without being upfront about it. "Yeah, of course this decision was a corrupt one. But who cares?" If you really don't care, just don't chime in. I ignore 100% of the "which 13 year-olds we are recruiting now" threads on the basketball board because I can't imagine caring about "recruits" who are so young. But I don't jump on every thread to say "so what?" It would be awfully self-centered, wouldn't it?