Keeping Score

Fighting to get back in ...

The Seattle Post Intelligencer ran an AP piece the other day on the U.S. Olympic Committee's campaign to reinstate women's softball as an Olympic event. The sport was dropped along with baseball earlier in the summer.

Hope for softball?

Speaking of John Powers at the Boston Globe (see post below), he seems to be the only one reporting that the women's softball federation is fighting back the IOC's decision to cut the sport from the Olympics. In "Softball federation wants another pitch" Powers writes,

• "Now that it appears that more than a few Lords of the Rings didn't know that softball and baseball are different sports, the softball federation wants the International Olympic Committee to reconsider last month's vote that dropped both from the 2012 program for London. Though IOC president Jacques Rogge insists the vote was final, the softball people (backed by the US Olympic Committee) want the results of the secret ballot revealed. If the vote was close, the federation has a better case, since a number of IOC members later said that they thought softball was simply women's baseball and might vote otherwise now. As it was, the program vote was bizarre, with the members going through seven rounds of balloting to select two replacement sports (karate and squash), which they then turned down by 2-1 ratios." (John Powers, Boston Globe, 8/16/05)

A quick search of newspapers and wires on Lexis-Nexis is showing no mention of this story (besides Powers' piece). In a previous post I mentioned how softball suffered this fate due to the IOC's desire to get rid of baseball. Most sports media didn't seem to care about this because Major League Baseball doesn't have much to do with Olympic baseball. But where is the outrage in the sports media about what happened to women's softball? Especially American sportswriters  - we have the top players in the world here - a big venue for their sport has been taken away from them and there is a barely a peep.

Olympics drops softball, baseball

Earlier this month, the International Olympic Committee announced that it was dropping both baseball and softball as Olympic events.  There wasn't much of an outcry in the American sports media because Major League Baseball never had much to do with the Olympics in the first place - one of the reasons it was dropped. It appears that women's softball suffered for it's association with baseball and some sports writers have also noted it was the pure dominance of the U.S. women's team that irked the IOC.  For the women, this is a huge loss as there are no major league opportunities for them.

"Olympic de-listing clouds future for national team" - San Diego Union Tribune (7/9/05)

"U.S. Dominance Caused Softball's Olympic Demise" - NYTimes (7/9/05)

"OLYMPICS: IOC's move is setback to softball" - Detroit Free Press (7/9/05)