Baseball and the Olympics: Not Much Happening There
Baseball, particularly Major League Baseball, has an off-putting relationship with the Olympic Games and, in particular, the International Olympic Committee.
Baseball pushed for inclusion in the Olympics for decades, and it was only for the 1992 Games that the IOC made baseball an official sport. Before that, it had been a demonstration sport seven times – more times as a bridesmaid than any other sport in IOC history.
And then after the 2008 Games, baseball was stripped from the games. The IOC insisted on an amateurs-only competition in 1992 and 1996, meaning that mostly collegiate players could represent the U.S. Once pros were admitted in 2000, MLB didn’t release its players for 2000, 2004 and 2008, so the U.S. was represented by minor leaguers.
So, what does it mean to baseball that the 2020 Olympics, in which baseball (and softball, we should point out) were due to return, have been postponed for a year as a way of combatting the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic?
For baseball as a whole, not much. For individuals, however, it means quite a bit. Take A’s closer Liam Hendriks. He’s worked in North America for more than a decade, but he remains close to the Australian roots and frequently goes back there in the offseason. And he’d like nothing better than to represent his homeland in the Olympics.
Hendriks would like to see a way for MLB and the IOC to get it together and allow big leaguers to compete in the Games, now scheduled for the summer of 2021.
"It's in the middle of the season. When you can play for your country and wear your name on the Australian jersey, it's something that if I got the opportunity to do, I would embrace," Hendriks told Australia’s Wide World Of Sports at the end of the 2019 season, “if it would work out, scheduling-wise.”
He says it’s a timing issue that admits of no easy answer, no matter what in what year the Games are contested. The Major League season runs from February through October, and the Olympics are games of summer. MLB has never shown any inclination to either let players leave their teams for a couple of weeks (or more) to do the Olympic thing.
"That's the biggest problem, the Major League season is so long," Hendriks said at the time. “A lot of the tournament will either coincide with the season or coincide with the brief periods of respite I'll have from the season."
For this year, at least, there is the hope that baseball will return and have some sort of 2020 season. For the Tokyo Olympics, it’s see-you-in-2021.
Just don’t count on Hendriks, or any other big leaguer, on display.