Baseball Olympic No More: Why the American Pastime was Left Stranded

This year, the media watched for news emerging from the 2009 International Olympic Committee as if Mayan prophecies and Dan Brown-like revelations would be stashed in its decisions. Disappointingly, Chicago lost its bid to become a host city in 2016. And golf and rugby would replace baseball and softball as Olympic competition sports (which will not be one in 2012, either). Several (more or less coherent) explanations have arisen. In this entry of The Irregular Season, I’ll be addressing a few of them. I’ll start with the most absurd and try to move toward the most convincing.

3. The IOC has an anti-American bias

Conservative columnist George Will is one person among many that has made the claim that the structure and style of baseball itself reflects American ideology. Since each player has an equal opportunity to effect the game’s outcome (as batters), so the argument goes, it profoundly echoes the egalitarian ethos of American culture. Famously, at the first introduction of baseball to an Olympic audience (at the 1936 “Jesse Owens” Olympics in Berlin), several German generals demanded that the American batters not swing for right field, where Hitler was sitting. Dow Jones, a 19-year-old outfielder from Iowa, recounts that the players bristled at the order and began targeting, with some mix of moral or nationalist indignation and professional pride, the Führer specifically.

Personally, I’m fascinated by these sorts of questions—“Does the game distill Americanness” and so forth—but find most of the answers limited or weak. (Which ideological echoes resonate for Japan [which has won the last several gold medals] might be the more compelling question right now.) “Anti-American” sentiment is really a catch-all for the various competing values that the U.S. has come to represent and embody: capitalism, globalism, corporate culture, representative democracies, secularism, anti-secularism, militarism, etc. The IOC and its member countries is so specifically committed to those same values, that only a vague and bitter prejudice would actually work systematically against the U.S.’s bid for the Games and other interests.

Reasonability: C

2. Baseball poses extensive logistical problems that make it unappealing.

Since baseball poses unique challenges (games run over, games occur during the traditional MLB season), there are very good reasons that they shouldn’t be forced into the tight, mechanized schedule of the Games. In fact, baseball often reminds me of the variability of athletic endeavor more than other sports: batting (and pitching and winning and losing) streaks, home-field advantage, and on and on. How do those factors curb international interest by unnaturally constraining that variability?

I find the argument faulty for one big reason: these are all problems that could be addressed by simple rule changes that would chafe the traditionalists. Among them: an upper limit on extra innings, the cooperation of MLB. Perhaps best of all and least possible? Replacing the dead-dull All-Star game with some sort of Olympic play-in series.


Reasonability: B-

1. No one has really made the great case for Olympic baseball.

Choosing Olympic baseball over other sports results in lower revenue and TV ratings, globally. The case that the IOC should sacrifice either in order to give exposure and opportunity to professional ballplayers and the sport seems kind of absurd given the atmosphere of current geo-politics. But there is no doubt that eliminating the sport from competition personally offends many sports fans stateside. Even though many elite American players don’t compete. Even though international team sports competitions (except Olympic basketball) don’t seem to interest U.S. fans particularly: Cubans were in greater uproar over the decision than Americans. In 2004, the U.S. team did not even qualify, as the only North or South American team to qualify was Cuba. Bud Seelig and MLB, in a short-sighted way, have spotlighted the World Classic to the disadvantage of any other competition.

None of the Olympic sports carry the kind of nationalist charge that they did in the 1930s and 1980s, and profit is now the greatest virtue of the games. Winning or losing the game, and especially not playing a specific game, does not energize the fan base. Consider it a natural result of globalization.

Reasonability: B +


Overtime: Or, The Best Reason For the Olympic Baseball

The excitement of watching clashing international styles (small ball vs. power, etc.). Seemingly, there has been little drama recently in Olympic sports: much of the pleasure in following the 1992 Dream Team or Michael Phelps was watching them crush opponents. The Olympics really are great comparative studies in opposing styles and their merits on a scale that most national leagues are not capable or willing to explore.

One example of this: it’s often proposed that MLB baseball has boiled down a team sport into an individual sport, and the pressure of the Games forces baseball back into a true team dynamic. Every four years, we see a subtle shift in American basketball strategy when the U.S. team faces off against the world’s best. And, ironically, that renews the sport’s commitment to foundational values.