Baseball in the Olympics: Is the Winter an Option?

The Games are in full swing. Michael Phelps became the Greatest Olympian Ever, his 18 golds equalling the total medal count of his nearest rival. Usain Bolt won the 100m again, becoming the second man ever to do that. Men’s basketball came closer to competitive parity, with Spain losing and the USA squeaking by Lithuania. And NFL commissar commissioner Rodger Goodell suggested that American Football should be an Olympic sport. Throughout all of this, the MLB regular season trudges on, and despite some great story lines, has lost most of its viewers to the Olympics.

So why doesn’t baseball get to partake in all this Olympic fever? For starters, 2008 was the last year it (and softball) was an Olympic sport. But even before that baseball never got Olympic attention. Why not?

Baseball first appeared in the Olympics at the 1912 games in Stockholm, with the USA beating Sweden 13-3. It then appeared in six more Olympics as an exhibition or demonstration sport, until 1992 in Barcelona. Baseball then had four more Olympic appearances, in Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, and Beijing before being ousted in ’08. The national pastime is out of the Olympics, probably for good, and theories as to its failure abound. I–with all my expertise in international athletic popularity and the politics of sport–will tell you the truth of it.

People claim that baseball is not a world sport, that the USA is the only country that cares about it. Anyone who follows baseball knows that statement to be completely erroneous, and the Olympic results back us up. In the five years baseball was a medal sport there were three different gold medal countries. The USA won gold only once. Six different countries won at least one medal, those being Cuba, the USA, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Chinese Taipei. Only Cuba medaled in every iteration. The recent–and resounding–success of the World Baseball Classic (WBC) bolsters the claim of international popularity.

As the previous paragraph attests, baseball was far from a one-sided, American-dominated Olympic sport.  In fact, basketball, in its most competitive form, is arguably more American than baseball: American baseball teams lose internationally; American basketball teams don’t. But basketball has become one of the most watched events. So why has basketball thrived while baseball got the boot?

There was a lot working against baseball’s Olympic success. Baseball is (traditionally speaking, and we’ll get to this in a minute) an outdoor, warm weather sport and the Summer Games are always during the MLB season. Then there was the amateur status that the IOC mandated for a long time. That kept out Major Leaguers even if (for some reason) they had wanted to forgo a portion of their season, travel around the world, jeopardize their multi-million dollar contracts and chances at a “World” Series, to compete for national pride. Even if they’d been allowed, there was  just no incentive. And that was the real issue.

Basketball’s big advantage comes down to star power. Baseball was doomed from the very beginning because the best baseball players in the USA were never going to attend the Olympics. Basketball is/was successful because even when the average margin of victory got up in the 40 point range every game, opponents wanted to see the Dream Team and get their autographs. Baseball was comprised of college players who never received any attention from their own country, let alone the world. And even then, college representatives weren’t even the best players their own age, because baseball drafts high-schoolers so often.

Finally, the player quality issue plaguing baseball wasn’t confined to America. For basketball, the competitive incentive that spawned the Dream Team arose as professionals from international programs found Olympic success, culminating in an embarrassing 1988 Bronze for the amateur Americans. Unlike the NBA, MLB is populated by a majority of foreign talent, so every country fielding an Olympic baseball team was handicapped by the absence of its best talent. When the top-teir competition was just a channel flick away, it wasn’t fun to watch mid-level talent grind out an uneventful marathon of homer-less, web gem-less innings (think present-day Olympic boxing, minus the rampant corruption).

So, is there a solution to the Olympic baseball question? I say yes: put it in the Winter Olympics.

I know, it doesn’t make sense off the bat. Baseball is a summer sport and no, I am not advocating snow-ball. But all that’s necessary would be an indoor stadium, nothing crazy. The number of domes is growing in MLB as well as Japan. The WBC used domes and was a huge success.

Though the thought of baseball in the winter might be odd, the dome makes it a moot point. April in the northeast is essentially winter, and you can bet David Ortiz and Robinson Cano would be gleeful if they could play indoors until June. The bigger obstacle for Olympic success is attracting the stars that make basketball the spectacle it has become. The switch to winter solves this problem too. Professionals could treat the Olympics as the ‘winter season’ many of them spend in Latin America or other warm weather climates. This would erase the conflict of interest, minimize the risk, and make the whole idea more platable to ownership. An MLB All-Star roster, a la the NBA Dream Teams, would make for a much more electrifying baseball experience–not to mention an exciting break from all the snow.

The idea really isn’t that far fetched. If you think about it, isn’t the NBA a winter sport? They start in the fall, peak around Christmas, and don’t finish until the spring. The big NBA stars are in the Summer Games because that’s their pro offseason. Couldn’t the same thing work for baseball?

-David Ringold