Fay Vincent talks about the loss of the Olympics in baseball, hinting darkly at conspiracies:
I wonder whether we can get beyond the stated reasons for the eliminations. The antidoping issue looks like a smoke screen, given baseball’s recent progress in dealing with the steroid plague. We will be told there is limited worldwide interest in the two sports, but how can a serious argument be made that baseball and softball are not as popular as sports with deep Olympic roots like rifle shooting, archery, sculling and Greco-Roman wrestling, whatever that is.
I suspect the worst here and am not confident anything can be done. (Link)
“I suspect the worst”? I think all that happened was baseball got screwed with a bad rep, but then I’m a Snopes-worshippin’ skeptic. And I gotta say, given that baseball was only introduced in 1992, I’m not very beholden to the idea that the sport has to be in the Olympics. I like the idea of the sport being so big that its international contest - the upcoming World Classic or whatever they’ve decided to call it - isbigger than the Olympics, in the same way as the World Cup is the most important tournament for football/soccer, rugby, and cricket.
In any case, it was funny to see Fay Vincent call on convicted felon George Steinbrenner to help his cause, given that Vincent was the one who made Steinbrenner resign as owner of the Yankees:
I also think our national Olympic committee, whose membership has recently included George Steinbrenner and Donald Fehr, the head of the baseball players union, might resolve the problem by offering to send our best players, the professionals from Major League Baseball, to reignite interest in Olympic baseball, as was done in basketball.