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It’s official: baseball and softball will no longer be Olympic sports. This is good news for the organizers of the 2012 London games as they try to save £50 million by not having to build facilities in Regents Park or anywhere else.
However, a large backlash has resulted in acing the two sports, so much so that they may be considered for re-inclusion in the 2016 games.
Which means things don’t look good for the inclusion of Rugby 7s.
It mostly has to do with Olympic politics.
There’s a campaign against Rogge (a rugby enthusiast). Also, the officials of the big Olympic sports don’t want the smaller ones included because they want a bigger slice of the revenue pie.
The major league baseball clubs refuse to release their best players for the Olympics, so the standard is nowhere near as high as it could be. And fastpitch softball is a joke as the ball, when it leaves the hand of a top class pitcher, crosses the plate at a greater speed than does a baseball because a softball mound is that much closer to the plate.
A softball batter has to guess before the ball is delivered, unlike a good baseball batter who can pick up even a fastball in flight. Result? A game that’s about as exciting as a lettuce sandwich.
It goes without saying that rugby is played in far more countries than the two ball games. And sevens would give countries like Fiji and New Zealand, among others, a chance to shine, something that’s hard to do in sports these days without massive amounts of money.
It’s also obvious that a great game of sevens would glue zillions of people to the screen, people who’ve never even seen a rugby ball. And it would make converts to the 15-a-side game.
So what’s to be done? A massive write-in to the IOC by all the rugby union and rugby league organizations, signed by hundreds of thousands of fans?
Love this article? Nominate it for The Roar’s Armchair Sports Writer Award. Or vote now for this week’s nominated articles.