The Battle to Bring Back Olympic Baseball Matters More Than You Think

Chong Tae-hyon whipped a low, sidearm pitch to Yulieski Gourriel. The Cuban star smacked the ball into the dirt of the temporary ballpark at the Beijing Wukesong Culture and Sports Center, and right at the shortstop for a 6-4-3 double play. That's how, on August 23, 2008, South Korea won the gold medal in Beijing. And that's how Olympic baseball ended.

For now.

In 2005, the International Olympic Committee decided to scrap baseball as of the 2012 Games in London. But it could be brought back for the 2020 edition in Tokyo.

Baseball's return isn't a given. The IOC is reluctant to add sports that require their own stadiums and bring in a large amount of athletes, further increasing the strain on the bloated Olympic village. But a new policy lets local organizing committees request sports not permanently on the Olympic slate be added for their Games. Baseball-mad Japan, predictably, requested baseball and softball, in addition to karate, climbing, surfing, and skateboarding. A final decision will be made in August.

As a compromise, there will likely be just one stadium used for both baseball and softball, even though Japan is flush with them. Both sports would return with just six teams, as opposed to the eight teams that competed when baseball was an official Olympic sport from 1992 through 2008.

This may all feel somewhat inconsequential, and baseball's comeback in the Olympics may very well be a one-time deal. Of the finalists for the 2024 Games—Rome, Paris, Budapest, and Los Angeles—only LA is likely to bring hardball back, even though Italy has a robust baseball scene. Nor is the tournament, in its proposed six-team format, likely to move the needle much, even as part of the world's premier multi-sport event.

The World Baseball Softball Confederation, an organization conceived in 2013 expressly to unite the governing bodies of both sports in order to facilitate a return to the Olympics, would have preferred to see eight teams. "A six-team format would eliminate the possibility for some of the best nations in the world to participate," WBSC president Riccardo Fraccari says, "and make it extremely challenging to stage an authentic global tournament that fans would expect to see at the pinnacle of sports, the Olympic Games."

Indeed, a half-dozen spots would exclude some legitimate baseball powers; the Americas alone count six worthy participants. But while Fraccari also argues that more teams would "translate into greater revenue generation for the organizing committee," the point here, ultimately, isn't so much the Olympics themselves, or the size of them. Japan would surely turn out for baseball, and the sport could post solid television ratings globally, considering that it's up against archery, canoeing, equestrian, synchronized swimming, and weightlifting. Rather, what really matters is what economists would call the "positive externalities"—the ripple effects of the Olympic baseball splash far from Japan's shores.

In any but a dozen or so well-established baseball countries, Olympic status could make the difference between having well-funded local organizations able to attract children to the sport with grassroots programs, and ramshackle outfits on life support.

"An Olympic impact would not only further baseball's stronghold in key markets across the North and South America and Asia but will also widen or even introduce our sport's attractiveness in emerging markets like Africa, Europe, and the Middle East," says Fraccari. "We could expect an injection of funding from a number of National Olympic Committees to national federations."

The global funding for the sport is the key here and the real prize of a return to the Olympics. "One of the great benefits of being a sport in the Olympic Games is the visibility, the promotion, the awareness, but also, to be quite honest, the financial support the sport's received as a part of that exercise," echoes Paul Seiler, executive director of USA Baseball. "It's a connection to Olympic committees, it's an opportunity for development. While the Olympic Games are in the public eye for 16 days of glory, for the sport's federations involved and affected, it's what's happening those other almost four years in between."

A developing baseball country like Brazil, for instance, will miss out on a significant boost this summer both in terms of finances and visibility. "The investment from the Brazilian Sports Ministry and Brazilian Olympic Committee could be much better," says Estevão Sato, vice president of the Brazilian Baseball and Softball Confederation. "There is a big difference between Olympic sports and non-Olympic sports investments."

Although Sato's organization is supported by Major League Baseball, its funding from the government and the Olympic committee was cut off completely when baseball was eliminated from the Summer Games. "It was very difficult to have private companies sponsoring baseball," Sato says. "Many baseball clubs closed their teams and ballparks were sold." He believes the funding would return if baseball were to regain its Olympic designation.

But what happens with the Olympic funding depends entirely on the country. In the Netherlands, which placed fourth at the 2013 World Baseball Classic and won the final Baseball World Cup in 2011, the National Olympic Committee never stopped supporting the sport, although it cut off softball. "Baseball returning to the Olympics won't affect our funding," says Gijs Selderijk, technical director of the Royal Dutch Baseball and Softball Federation. "It's great for our sport's image and it will get more publicity, making it more appealing to partners and sponsors. We expect baseball to get a lot more attention in other countries as well and that will give national team programs a boost. It would be good for the sport, especially in Europe."

In England, meanwhile, baseball never got much funding because the national team had no hope of qualifying for the Olympics. Bob Fromer, a consultant to Baseball Softball UK, argues that until England is competitive, Olympic status won't much matter. He points out, however, that the English government does invest significantly in a separate fund for grassroots baseball at the youth level. Essentially, the English are playing a long game in hopes of getting a return down the line.

The United States Olympic Committee doesn't actually fund USA Baseball, which got cut off after the Athens Olympics in 2004, presumably so the USOC could focus on sports that needed the money more. It has a formal relationship with MLB, which owns commercial rights in exchange for sponsorship and support, but it raises its own funds through sponsorship and events.

In the bulk of countries, Olympic status would help baseball attract new investment. "Where it really has a lot of effect," says Seiler, "is in countries where the sport is not traditional, not in the culture or the DNA, but where there's still an interest and an interesting in developing the sport."

The other big winner in all this would, ironically, be Major League Baseball. Insiders say that a large part of the reason baseball was scrapped from the Olympics was because it wasn't seen as clean at its highest levels, owing to MLB's rampant performance-enhancing-drug problem at the time. And, in addition to the cost of stadiums, the IOC also didn't like that the American league wouldn't release its best players. MLB would only allow players not on 40-man big league rosters to participate. Stephen Strasburg, Jake Arietta, Dexter Fowler, and plenty of other big names were on the 2008 team, but they were only prospects at the time.

The league office has made very plain its ambition to mine international markets for new customers. Commissioner Rob Manfred wants to globalize the sport even more than his predecessor Bud Selig. MLB now has offices in the Dominican Republic, Australia, Japan, China, and London. It puts on showcases and camps around the world and has staged regular season games in Japan, Australia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, with plans for more in Europe. Spring training games have taken place in Taiwan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and China.

Despite several decades of investment, however, returns have been modest. There exists no significant Major League Baseball viewership in any country that wasn't already a baseball country before these efforts.

Olympic baseball unlocks funds for national baseball federations, much of which goes to recruiting children to the sport. Kids who take up baseball in a non-baseball country start following Major League Baseball for a lack of local alternatives and soon become fans who can be monetized—I speak from personal experience here.

Yet for all the obvious benefits, several sources told VICE Sports that MLB still doesn't plan to release its stars for the Tokyo Games, even though it would very much help make the case for baseball to rejoin the Olympics permanently. Apparently, the league office now plans to make all players available except for those on the 25-man rosters, rather than the 40-man rosters.

"As Commissioner Manfred has stated in the past, the Olympics are a challenge because of the calendar," says an MLB spokesman, "and they are particularly a challenge when the site is halfway around the world and the date falls in the middle of our regular season."

Yet this is also true for the National Hockey League, which nevertheless interrupts its season and releases all of its players. (So does the NBA, but as a Summer Olympic sport, the tournament falls in its off-season.) While it's also true that the burden on pitchers, the most valuable assets in the sport, could be weighty—a problem hockey doesn't have—MLB being obstinate could ultimately harm its sport, and therefore itself.

"As our sport becomes more and more global, it is important to have the support and shared vision of all of baseball's professional leagues around the world," Fraccari says. "And this is not only to return but to stay in the Olympics."