Softball is the victim of a bad call by the IOC

The U.S. women’s softball team calls its pre-Olympic tuneup the Bound 4 Beijing tour.

A better name is Bound 4 Beijing . . . and then Olympic oblivion.

The International Olympic Committee, in one of the less enlightened moves by a rarely enlightened body, voted in 2005 to kick softball and baseball out of the Games after this year.

There’s a semblance of logic for dropping baseball. Because its season conflicts with the Games, its top players aren’t available for the Olympics.

But dumping softball, which sends its best players, makes no sense and only reinforces the IOC’s good-old-boy arrogance.

“Those of us who were part of the 2004 team, we thought we had reached incredible heights. This is so disappointing,” said three-time gold medalist Lisa Fernandez of Long Beach, recently designated a Beijing alternate after taking three years off to have a son, Antonio.

“The dreams of thousands of girls are just gone. We worked so hard to get where we are, from the bottom of the barrel to the peak of the highest mountain.”

The IOC seems intent on pushing them back down.

It delights in making money from the female gymnasts, runners and swimmers who become the Games’ marquee athletes but has been slow to welcome women onto its playing fields and into its boardrooms.

After decades of growth, nearly 41% of the 10,625 Athens Olympians were women. But only 16 of the IOC’s 110 members (14.5%) are women and only one woman sits on the 15-member IOC executive board.

Eliminating softball, a women’s sport, won’t help those numbers or promote the inclusiveness the Olympic movement supposedly promotes.

The rationale is that the Summer Games have become too big, and IOC President Jacques Rogge wants to cut sports that lack a global following or competitive depth.

Reading between the lines, it’s easy to interpret the rejection of baseball and softball as anti-American because both are strongly identified with this country -- and because the U.S. women have dominated international softball competition.

Don Porter, president of the Florida-based International Softball Federation, said anti-American sentiment “might have been a small part of it.” He said he was told the key reason was an IOC evaluation that ranked softball in the middle of almost all criteria used to judge the 28 sports on the Summer Games program.

That makes no sense to Fernandez.

“We were nowhere near the bottom in attendance or participation,” she said. “I could understand if we were 23rd in fan attendance or at the bottom of countries that play our game, but that’s not the case.”

Although the 2012 London Olympics are a lost cause, softball can apply for reinstatement in the 2016 Games.

Emmanuelle Moreau, a spokeswoman for the IOC, said she couldn’t comment on softball specifically but said all sports are analyzed after each Olympics with attention to their universality, anti-doping measures and appeal to young people.

“It is to encourage all federations to make improvements,” she said. “The place is not guaranteed for every Olympics. The message presented is that this is not a definitive decision and we expect you to make the necessary changes.”

Porter is well into that process. His first step was creating a task force called Back Softball to get the message out to international media, educate Olympic decision-makers about the sport and increase international participation.

The ISF has established centers where athletes can play and train and has provided equipment and instruction around the world. The recent addition of Jordan increased the ISF membership to 130 nations, and it hopes to reach 150 by October 2009, when it can plead its case before the IOC.

For comparison’s sake, the ISF has more members than field hockey (120), modern pentathlon (90) and triathlon (121), though fewer than track and field (212) or aquatic sports (194).

“A lot of IOC members saw our sport as women’s baseball and thought of the problems baseball has had, and we’re not women’s baseball,” Porter said.

“We’re attending many of the international meetings and keeping the IOC members updated on our progress. Plus, the competition level in some countries is getting better.”

Meanwhile, Team USA is piling up impressive numbers on its tour, which will stop at UCLA today for a 6 p.m. game against the Bruins.

The team is 25-1 and has outscored opponents 268-9. Its loss occurred in a no-hitter by Virginia Tech’s Angela Tincher last month.

“We’re looking to be back in 2016, and we will use Beijing as the world-class stage that it is to prove we belong in the Olympics,” said Jennie Finch of La Mirada, who pitched a perfect game against Louisiana Lafayette in her last start, on Saturday.

Selling the game and building support for an Olympic return has become almost as important as preparing for the Games.

“It’s definitely a theme and something we realize is part of the deal,” said catcher Stacey Nuveman of La Verne.

They and their sport deserve a far better deal than the IOC has given them.

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Helene Elliott can be reached at helene.elliott@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Elliott, go to latimes.com/elliott.