Posted on 07/07/2005 10:00:36 PM PDT by GulliverSwift
SINGAPORE, July 8 -- Baseball and softball were dropped Friday from the Olympics for the 2012 Summer Games in London.
Each of the 28 existing sports was put to a secret vote by the International Olympic Committee, and baseball and softball failed to receive a majority required to stay on the program. The other 26 sports were retained.
"I think they've made a big, big mistake," said Tommy Lasorda, the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager who managed the 2000 U.S. team to the gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Games. "Baseball is played by all countries now and softball, too. I think that's really going to hurt the Olympics. I don't want to knock the other sports, but I think this is a big mistake. I am very disappointed."
The IOC will consider replacing them with two sports from a waiting list of five: golf, rugby, squash, karate and roller sports. That decision will be made Saturday.
Baseball and softball are the first sports cut from the Olympics since water polo in 1936.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I'll bet they'll put in rugby, as to not assist American imperialism.
Yet they keep synchronized swimming....
As Ernie Banks used to say, "Let's play two!~"
so they cut Baseball and Softball?
it isnt like the US dominates Baseball or anything, because we don't in the Olympics...but softball we do....
thats right, let's drive American dollars away further and then promote SOCCER and some other meaningless boring competition....
I believe this ties in with the Russia/China association in an attempt to "beat" the US in the medal count. I'm truly shocked they didn't vote out basketball, although the US isn't necessarily a shoe-in for that medal any more.
As the Great Jim Rome said on the first day of the Olympics in 2004, today marks 22 days until the olympics are over....
lol
The Japanese won't be happy either.
If they dropped all 28, they still couldn't rouse my interest.
LOL! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
I'm not kidding, either.
The ONLY Olympic coverage I watched last year was when I found out the Iraqi soccer team was doing well. I watched the last few minutes of the game they won. 'Dats it.
The 2002 SLC Olympics, on the contrary, was very entertaining.
Thats the ticket ... RollerBall!!!
Bartholemew: How are you, Moonpie?
Moonpie: Feeling MEAN, Mr. Bartholemew
I'm surprised that only one comment has mentioned the probably political nature of this decision, suggesting that this is about helping the Russians and Red Chinese
in the medal count at the expense of the U.S.
That may well be. Or it may be even simpler: A bytch-slap at the U.S. for being evil and doing things like ousting Saddam and executing vile murderers by painless lethal injection.
Guess that the Arab nations were pushing for bus bombing and child killing, There was just no room for baseball and Softball.
ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz....
I heard that they voted in a new sport that doesn't have balls in it. French Groveling.
Baseball and softball are world sports, and it's probably true that it was voted out in order to injure American scoring.
Sadly, it is a real competition that is lost instead of a judged competition.
I detest the judged competition sports. All of them. While they are athletic, they are not sports.
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