IOC Drops Softball, Baseball

Baseball and softball were kicked out of the Olympics come the 2012 Games in London, the International Olympic Committee decided today in a vote that emphatically underscores U.S. political impotence within the European-dominated Olympic movement.

The action opens the door to golf, karate, roller sports, rugby or squash to move into the Olympic spotlight.

The IOC will decide later how to fill baseball and softball’s spots on the Olympic program. Baseball and softball will be played at the Beijing Games in 2008.

No sport had been cut from the Olympics since 1936, when polo was given the boot.

Tom Lasorda, the former Dodger manager who led the U.S. to gold at the 2000 Olympics at Sydney, Australia, said, “They’re making a big mistake, that’s all I can say. They should reconsider and make sure they don’t drop baseball or softball.”

He also said, “Having baseball in the Olympics is great. All the countries around the world are beginning to play baseball.... Why would they want to take baseball out?”

Dot Richardson, who won gold medals as a member of the U.S. softball teams at the 1996 Games in Athens and the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, said in a telephone interview just moments after the vote, “I can’t believe it, actually.”

She also said, “It’s really a shame. There are a lot of young girls that dreamed of the Olympics. Now their dreams won’t come true.”

The action comes just two days after New York was eliminated in its bid for the 2012 Games, and IOC member Bob Ctvrtlik of Newport Beach said, “I think the United States is the big loser.

“We had a really solid bid but didn’t garner support. We are a proponent of women’s sports and a women’s sport was voted out. And baseball is our national pastime.

“I think you really have to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate how we’re approaching the Olympic movement.”

The vote today marked the latest chapter in a controversy that has enveloped the IOC since 2002.

To keep the program fresh, IOC President Jacques Rogge had suggested the possibility of adding sports. But the Summer Games are capped at 28 sports, 301 events and 10,500 athletes. If a new sport is to get in, one of the 28 has to go.

In 2002, Rogge proposed the elimination of baseball, softball and modern pentathlon. The full IOC session, meeting in Mexico City, opted to keep all three.

Pentathlon, along with 25 other sports, survived today’s vote.

Baseball became a medal sport at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, softball in 1996 in Atlanta. Eliminating softball means cutting eight 15-player teams -- in all, 120 women out of the Games.

Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, the senior IOC member in the United States, called it “a horrific day” for the role of women in the Olympics.

Baseball’s position had been believed to be more tenuous because major league players do not play in the Games.

The IOC’s policy is to seek the best athletes at the Olympics -- the very thing that in part prompted the inclusion of professionals in the Games and led to the arrival of, for instance, the 1992 U.S. men’s basketball Dream Team featuring Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and others.

In addition, the doping issues that have swirled around baseball for the last two years were seen to erode baseball’s support within the IOC, which under Rogge has taken a hard-line approach to doping violations.

Reached by telephone, Rich Levin, spokesman for Major League Baseball, declined to comment on the IOC vote.

Don Porter, the Florida-based president of the International Softball Federation, said here after today’s vote, “It’s payback for Mexico City. They wanted us out then. It took them three years -- and now they’ve got us out.”

After the Mexico City session, the IOC tried a different tactic. It undertook a comprehensive review of all 28 sports, with each of the 28 now subject to an in-or-out vote after every edition of the Games, with any changes to take effect seven years later -- meaning, for instance, 2012 for today’s vote. The 2016 program will be considered in 2009.

Baseball and softball are allowed to re-apply for 2016.

Officials with each of the 28 sports had lobbied to keep the lineup intact, Swiss IOC member and rowing federation President Denis Oswald saying before today’s vote, “Let’s not change a winning team.”

The IOC voted by secret ballot. The results were not made public -- in contrast to most other IOC business, including the vote Wednesday in which London defeated Paris, 54-50, in the final round of voting to win the 2012 Games.

IOC member Dick Pound of Canada told the IOC assembly he found the secrecy inexplicable.

He said, “It’s off-message in the year 2005.”