Olympic Baseball

Two quintessential American sports -- baseball and softball -- will be dropped from the Olympic Games after 2008 for different and various reasons, and will not be contested at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. It is possible, however, that one or both sports could win reinstatement in a vote of IOC members in 2009, and be played at the 2016 Olympic Games. In the case of baseball, the strikes against continued inclusion were over its chronic doping problem and the lack of participation by the sport's top players, owing to the refusal of MLB to suspend its season and club owners to release its players for the Olympic tournament. This week, a glimmer of hope was raised when MLB vice president and USA Baseball general manager Bob Watson suggested that the league might suspend its season if either Chicago or Tokyo -- two professional baseball cities in baseball-crazed countries -- won the right to host the 2016 Olympic Games. On this basis alone, however, the glimmer might as well be extinguished, because the IOC is unlikely to condition the inclusion of sports on a particular city's hosting of the Olympic Games. Your thoughts?

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http://mlb.mlb.com/content/printer_friendly/mlb/y2008/m07/d16/c3142921.jsp

http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/167503/mlb-to-allow-top-players-to-participate-in-olympics

http://www.china.org.cn/sports/news/2008-07/18/content_16030965.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/sports/olympics/17baseball.html?ref=sports

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