The national pastime may once again be featured as an Olympic sport.
Earlier this month, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) supported the proposal to add baseball - as well as softball, karate, skateboarding, sports climbing and surfing - to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.
If the proposal is approved during the full IOC vote in August, both baseball and softball will feature a six-nation tournament in Tokyo.
Wait a second. Why were these two sports eliminated from Olympic competition in the first place?
It has been more than a few years, so I needed a little help jogging my memory. According to a 2006 article published by Baseball America, Jacques Rogge - then the president of the IOC - said "the lack of major leaguers and drug testing discrepencies, as well as the expense of building baseball and softball venues," were major causes for their removal from the Olympic program following the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
At the time, those were legitimate concerns. Baseball was in the midst of a steroid scandal, and the Mitchell Report would not be published for another year. That period consisted of some of baseball's darker days, in a time when we weren't sure who was guilty and who was innocent of using performance-enhancing drugs.
Well, 10 years have passed. Baseball has cleaned up its act. It's time to make it an Olympic sport again.
Baseball made its debut in the 1904 Olympics held in St. Louis, but it wasn't until 1992 when it became a medal sport. In the five Olympics between 1992 and 2008, Cuba won the gold medal three times. The United States (2000) and South Korea (2008) also won a gold medal during that span.
Softball did not become a medal sport until 1996. The U.S. won three gold medals until softball was pulled following the 2008 Olympics.
Through the years, the Olympics has begun allowing professional athletes to participate. The NBA began sending players to the Olympics in 1992. The NHL followed suit in 1998.
The MLB, however, has not. In 2008, only players who weren't on the 25-man roster for each of the 30 teams were allowed to compete in the Olympics. As a result, the U.S. team consisted of college players and minor leaguers.
And unlike the NHL, the MLB chose not to halt its season for two weeks and allow the major leaguers to represent their countries at the Olympics. Doing so would result in one of three options: starting the season earlier, ending the season later or cutting games from the 162-game schedule. None of those options were viable.
I know, so far it sounds like I'm building an argument to keep baseball and softball out of the Olympics. It seems like an open-and-shut case. But hear me out.
I'm perfectly fine with major leaguers being excluded from the Olympics. We already have the World Baseball Classic, so the Olympics is a chance for the future All-Stars to shine on the world's stage.
In 1984, the U.S. team consisted of a handful of future major leaguers, such as Mark McGwire, Will Clark and Hall of Famer Barry Larkin. The 1988 team featured even more future major leaguers, and the U.S. won the first-place game behind a complete-game victory from Jim Abbott, a first-round draft pick earlier that summer.
More recently, in the 2008 Olympics, a future Cy Young Award winner named Jake Arrieta struck out seven batters, leading the U.S. to a win against China.
What I'm trying to say is this. It doesn't matter if major leaguers play or not. It's still going to be competitive baseball, and that's what I want to see.
And as for the cost of building the venues? Olympic host cities spend billions of dollars to build new stadiums, and some venues are already existing. If the University of Missouri can build a new softball stadium, why can't the Olympics do the same?
It looks likely baseball and softball will return to the Olympics in 2020, mainly because the two sports are already popular in Japan, the host country. Let's not have this be a one-and-done instance. Keep baseball and softball in the Olympic program, for good.