Struck Out

I can hear it already. There's still most of two years left before the London Olympics, but from the USA it's all whine whine whine, moan moan moan, bitch bitch bitch. 'Why,' they grouse into their Buds, 'did the god damn International Olympic Committee exclude baseball from the Olympics?'

For plenty of reasons, that's why. Here are three:

First, why does baseball need it? For track and field events, and lesser-followed sports such as rowing and shooting, the Olympics is the most esteemed championship, and winning a gold medal is beyond question the pinnacle of a competitor's career. But football has the World Cup, for example, and tennis has its four open tournaments, so for these sports, the Olympics is just a sideshow; a gold medal is nice to have, but it's not what players aspire to. Baseball already has the World Classic, so it doesn't need the Olympics... Strike One!

Second, is it worth the trouble? Baseball stadia are unique in form and function, and baseball can't be played in a different shaped stadium. The cost of adapting existing stadia then refitting them after the games would be huge, but not as high as constructing purpose-build stadia for which there would be no other use after the Olympics. Unless the games are always held in a baseball-playing country, it's more trouble than it's worth... Strike Two!

Third, who cares? The key word is 'International', and there are no criteria by which baseball can be said to be an international sport. None. It's played and followed widely only in the USA, its immediate neighbours, and a couple of hangers-on on the Pacific coast of north-west Asia. In Europe, Africa, most of Central and South America, Australia, Central Asia, Southern Asia and the middle east, it has at best a marginal following. Global popularity stats often place baseball in the top ten, but these stats are based on the number of players or the attendance at games, which will heavily favour sports played several times a week by enormous teams in populous countries such as the USA and Japan; people more cynical even than I might suggest that those criteria were chosen deliberately to boost baseball's ranking. However, stats that account for breadth of popularity rather than depth would likely show very different results, and it's breadth of popularity that counts for the Olympics... Strike Three! Back to the dugout, please.

My question is, why is there so much whingeing? If soccer were dropped from the Olympics, I probably wouldn't notice, and I certainly wouldn't care, and I'm certain most of my English compatriots would feel the same way. So I find it strange that Americans, who usually have such disdain for world opinion on truly weighty issues (starting wars, torturing people and the like), are so exercised over a little thing like sport. My guess is that they just can't accept that, for once, they're not getting their own way. They've taken it as a massive personal affront that the sport that gave us the 'World Series' (the USA and Canada only) and 'The Shot Heard Around the World' (New York only) isn't wanted by the actual world, and they're sulking and throwing their toys out of the pram like babies.

It's not about America, okay? The IOC didn't drop baseball because they're Eurocentric, or because they're anti-American, or because they're wine-bibbing cheese-eating godless pinko commies. They dropped it because it doesn't belong in the Olympics, and that's it.

Kindly get over it.