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Baseball and Softball Will Not Be a Part of the 2016 Olympics

By Brendan Scolari

According to Jeff Latzke of Boston.com, the 2016 Olympic Games will not include either baseball or softball:

In 2005, softball and baseball became the first sports in 69 years to be dropped from the Olympics, beginning with the 2012 London Games. Both lost appeals for reinstatement in 2006 and then set their sights on this year's vote to get back on the program for 2016.

Instead, International Olympic leaders voted to recommend that golf and rugby be added to the 2016 Games, while softball, baseball and three other sports were left out.

Softball has only been included for the last four Olympics. Neither sport got more than two votes out of the eight needed as part of seven rounds of secret balloting to decide whether to let them join again. Now the MLB has turned its focus mostly on the World Baseball Classic for future years. Ron Radigonda, executive director of the Amateur Softball Association of America, questioned the practice of limiting the number of sports allowed in the Olympics:

I think our biggest fear in this is it will be difficult for us, being part of the international federation, to be able to promote throughout the world.

I really have no issue with the sports that were selected. They certainly have their place on a world stage, but I also believe that softball and squash and karate and other sports do as well. I think that the limiting of sports to 28 is really a question that needs to be raised.

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