Always baseball season for Schiller

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It snowed in New York on Friday, but Harvey Schiller’s mood was sunny as he prepared to fly to Los Angeles for today’s semifinals and Sunday’s final of the World Baseball Classic.

Schiller, president of the International Baseball Federation (IBAF), said he was delighted with attendance at the tournament, which he said had increased over the 2006 figures. Three games at the Tokyo Dome drew sellout crowds of 43,000 and the U.S.-Canada game at Toronto’s Rogers Centre drew more than 42,000.

The games in San Diego didn’t draw as well, but Schiller said attendance had been robust in a less-than-robust economy.

‘Historically baseball has done well in down economic times,’ he said. ‘One of the things baseball does have as an attraction is that certainly there are high-priced tickets and suites close to the field but it’s not untypical to have $10 seats for families and so forth. And some of the ticket packages for four people even include hot dogs and drinks. So it’s a very marketable sport in today’s environment.’

Having the U.S. advance to the semifinals Sunday against Japan must have been a boost for his hopes of filling seats at Dodger Stadium this weekend, but Schiller pleaded impartiality.

‘I’ve got to be fair. From my position as president of the international federation I can’t say it’s better for one team or another. That would not be good,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Cuba is going home not feeling very well, and the Dominican Republic never expected to be defeated by the Netherlands.

‘Obviously it plays to a home crowd when the USA is there, sure.’

Schiller’s other preoccupation is continuing the federation’s efforts to have baseball readmitted to the Olympic program.

Baseball and softball were voted out of the 2012 Games, which will take place in London. Both sports, and five others, have applied to be readmitted in 2016, and a decision will be made when the International Olympic Committee meets in October in Copenhagen.

‘We’re focusing on the strength of the game, its worldwide popularity, the fact that it’s the national sport of so many countries, the fact that it broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson, that socially there’s no economic barriers to playing the game and you’ll see it on high-end fields and you’ll see it on the streets of the Dominican Republic,’ Schiller said.

‘I like to say that if baseball had not been on the program I would expect that the Olympic movement would be trying to entice us to get back in. Now that we’re out, we’ve got to fight to get back in.’

He also cited the IBAF’s drug-testing program as a strength -- he said that by the end of the World Baseball Classic, more than 300 in-competition tests will have been administered -- but the game’s association with steroid use in Major League Baseball could hurt its chances of returning to the Olympics.

No one from the IOC has ever spoken about that link to him, he said, but ‘they read the international papers and when you have a player like [Alex Rodriguez] who makes a statement about taking drugs it’s reflected in conversations.

‘If that’s going to be a negative, then we shouldn’t have cycling, skiing, track and field, weightlifting, I could go through several dozen sports. That would be an unfair comparison. Kids play this game from T-ball at 4 years old and we still want them participating. I think most people who have played the game or watch it enjoy it and they don’t want the players that are involved in any drug-taking to be in it, and we have ways of suspending players that do.’

The finalists to host the 2016 Games are Chicago, Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro, which Schiller thinks would help baseball’s chances of returning.

‘They all have active baseball programs in their country,’ he said. ‘Rio had the Pan American Games and they have large stadiums in Sao Paulo and other places. Barcelona was the site when baseball was a medal sport for the first time in 1992 and they have active programs. Then you have Tokyo and Chicago and both of those bring financial additions to the game, I think, because of the size of the stadiums and the interest in baseball.

‘For a Games in Chicago we could look at a five-game tournament, which I think would allow some of the best players to participate. And that’s another thing that we’re working on. And the commissioner, [Bud] Selig, has said that he will ensure that the teams that participate in 2016 will have the best representatives in baseball, compared to any other.’

-- Helene Elliott