IOC Playing Hardball With Softball?

In a move that throws the future of softball in the Olympics into even deeper doubt, the International Olympic Committee’s policy-making executive board Sunday approved new quotas that will add 128 more female athletes to the Olympic program in the 2008 Beijing Games than competed in 2004 in Athens.

The IOC’s general assembly voted last July to cut baseball and softball from the Olympics after the 2008 Games. The excision of softball means the loss of 120 women.

Last October, the executive board made up for two-thirds of that number, agreeing to add 80 slots for women in such sports as soccer, field hockey and team handball.

Through a complex formula that involves subtraction from some sports and additions to others, such as modern pentathlon, taekwondo and triathlon, the board ended up Sunday with 48 more spots for women, a total of 128 more in 2008 -- a preemptive strike that blunts arguments that cutting softball is a step backward for the IOC’s ongoing campaign for gender equity.

The IOC has capped the number of athletes in the Summer Games at 10,500; about 42% of the competitors at the Athens Games were women.

Baseball and softball backers have been lobbying intensely since last July’s action, hoping the IOC will reinstate the two sports at its annual all-delegates assembly, which starts here Wednesday.

The two were the first sports cut from the Olympic program since 1936, when polo was dropped. Needing a simple majority of 53 voters in last July’s election to remain in the Games, softball was voted out on a 52-52 tie. Baseball was knocked out by a vote of 54-50.

The two sports are closely identified with the U.S., which wields a diminished influence politically within the IOC, and reinstatement thus is problematic.

To even get on the agenda at this week’s assembly will take a motion supported by one-third of the 100-plus members. Then at least 51% of the members must agree to put it to a vote. After that, each sport must get a simple majority to be reinstated. In all -- three votes for each sport.

Said Anita DeFrantz, the senior U.S. delegate to the IOC: “The question is, should we revisit what I consider to be a mistake so soon? To which my answer is: yes. You revisit it as soon as you can, and correct it.”

But the prospect of revisiting the issue just seven months later troubles many members, including IOC President Jacques Rogge and other influential European members. Said one, speaking on the condition of anonymity, “For the IOC to go back on its decision? I would expect some organized resistance.”