No Good Deed Goes Unpunished (Updated)

We would scarcely have know the U.S. softball team beat Japan 4-1 in extras to play for its fourth straight gold medal had we not run across article here on yesterday's front page of the San Diego U-T detailing the vote taken by the IOC in Singapore in 2005 that gave the death sentence to softball as an event at future Olympics.

The central figure is the owner of Easton Sports which makes aluminum bats, Jim Easton who recused himself from the vote as he believed there was a conflict of interest as he and his company stood to gain from a continuation of softball as an Olympic event. It turns out that Easton’s “yea” vote would’ve broken the 52-52 deadlock providing the simple majority needed to save softball.

It was the right and honorable thing to do but Easton has been treated less than charitably by the U.S. softball community who have essentially blamed him for killing the dreams of not only American girls but those the world over who see the U.S. as the bell cow in this sport.

For their part, NBC has been shoveling dirt onto the grave as much like a Stalinesque air-brushing of photos, the network has appeared to go out of its way to disregard any scores, updates and/or highlights of the softball team. We’ve been consistent viewers of NBC’s prime-time programming and its become evident that between their non-reporting of political events outside the sporting venues and the softball team’s successes, the network is pathetically bend-over compliant to the desires of the IOC.

UPDATE #1: So much for American dominance, hegemony and its exercise of soft-imperialism... Team U.S.A. loses in gold medal game to Japan, 3-1. Given this perception, this may indeed be the game that ultimately saves softball as an Olympic sport. We'd love to know how the Japanese contingent voted 3 years ago in Singapore.

Beijing '08 Olympics Update

(One in an occasional series provided during the run-up to the ’08 Summer Games in Beijing, China. Archived posts in this series can be accessed by entering “Olympics” in the blog search box above).

Softball is such an unpopular sport worldwide, the sport merely sold out out the 300,000 tickets for the 9-day tournament at the Beijing Games.

Currently, softball is scheduled to be dropped from the roster of events in the Olympic games; it will not be played in 2012. The fact that Team USA has won all 3 gold medals and is favored to win it again in August led us to opine there was some anti-American sentiment in the decision to axe softball. But selling-out the event is evidence that, similar to the rise in popularity of basketball worldwide in the wake of the Dream Teams’ dominant performance in the ’92 games, American excellence in softball is actually a boon to the sport.

Would they have sold-out the event even if the Americans weren’t that good? Possibly, but having America as top dog with photogenic athletes like Jennie Finch and Caitlin Lowe known to softball fans around the world, will never hurt the sport.

Fortunately, the IOC has an opportunity to put aside politics and grasp the reality of the situation and reinstate the sport for the 2016 Games with a vote coming up on the matter in October of 2009.

P.S. Absent from the Olympics, the International Softball Federation would be wise to sponsor a “World Championship”-style tourney immediately prior to the Games in 2012 should the IOC not see past their myopia when voting next October.

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