Will baseball be played at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympic Games?

London 2012 was an awful Olympics. Oh, sure, Anthony Joshua won the gold medal in boxing, and Danny Boyle’s intro ceremony was, well… not terrible, in places. But for millions of fans, the exclusion of baseball and softball gave those games a sour taste. Particularly those of us who were at that time playing in the UK, active in Baseball Softball UK, and hoping for British baseball’s world-stage debut on home turf in London.

Baseball and softball were replaced with golf and rugby sevens, two wonderful sports. But the idea, expressed by IOC head Jacques Rogge at the time, that baseball has no following, not the best players, and is somehow less universal than those two sports, is laughably stupid. And that is putting it delicately.

There was a glimmer of hope for baseball and softball fans with Tokyo 2020, when the sports were reinstated as a one-time event by Japanese organizers, overruling the IOC. And it makes sense, because in Japan, baseball is king. They have taken to soccer and rugby in recent years, of course, but nothing comes close to baseball’s popularity in the Far Fast. So they fought the corner and put baseball and softball back on the agenda, and for that, God bless the Japanese.

But it was a short-lived success, with the IOC announcing that baseball and softball would not be on the menu for Paris 2024. They will be replaced by, are you ready for this?

Breakdancing. Oh, how I wish this was a joke. Sometimes, I can’t even recognize the world that we are living in.

The IOC have yet to make an announcement on the final run of events 2028 Los Angeles games, but there is still hope that reason will prevail. If the IOC balks at taking this step, the organizers could follow Tokyo’s lead and simply add the games as a one-time event.

The rot at the heart of the IOC

The Olympics are a wonderful expression of international peace and friendly competition demonstrated through sports. But they have a fundamental identity crisis that they simply refuse to address.

Are the Olympics to be a celebration for popular professional sports or are they a showcase for lesser-known sports with little or no public exposure? As trite as this question may seem, it goes directly to the heart of the discussion around baseball and softball’s inclusion in the Games.

The IOC has expressed their belief that baseball and softball are simply not popular enough to be included. Even the most cursory glance at numbers in the most lazy Google search will tell you that this is a patently ridiculous statement. And in an Olympic universe where wrestling, water polo, and table tennis are staples, popularity is clearly not a valid criteria. Honestly, when was the last time you watched handball, badminton, or fencing, outside of the Olympics?

The International Olympic Committee must decide which side of the fence it sits on. The waters were forever muddied when they allowed professional athletes to compete back in 1986, and the IOC has shied away from the issue for nearly forty years. It was easier to propound on the “integrity of sports” when the Olympics were all amateur.

FIFA has never, and will never, sanctioned soccer in the Olympics, for the simple reason that it would water down their World Cup brand. Cricket does the same, but for political reasons, namely that cricket is a sport played exclusively by the former British Empire. No nation outside of this club has any cricketing background, or cricketing interest, and to avoid the inevitable protest from the Spanish-speaking and French-speaking world, not to mention the Russians, Chinese, and everyone else, the ICC have simply said that they don’t want to detract from the Cricket World Cup.

Please.

Baseball has long had a similar relationship with the American sphere of influence. Extremely popular in the Caribbean, Central America and the Far East, it traces a map of the places where the USA has either maintained strong ties or invaded. Convincing the IOC that the sport has moved beyond that level of interest, and equally as important, success, is key to the reinstatement of the sport.

Tokyo 2020 went a long way toward forcing the issue. Canada took bronze in softball, the Dominican Republic did likewise in baseball, with Japan beating the USA for the gold. Israel lost all of their games but one, but did so in a fashion that showed that they are a team that do indeed belong on the world stage, making each contest a hard-fought, close score.

World Baseball Softball Confederation President Riccardo Fraccari hailed Tokyo as a chance to “welcome new fans to our beautiful game and inspire a new generation of stars who we look forward to seeing going for gold at the Olympics again soon.”

Hear, hear, Riccardo. Hear, hear.