AROUND THE BASES

Two significant events involving Major League Baseball occurred within a few days of each other recently. On July 8, the International Olympic Committee announced that baseball and softball would be dropped from the Olympics after the 2008 games. That means America’s National Pastime and its softball cousin will be absent from London in 2012.

The second event was the major league All-Star Game, played in Detroit on July 12. The two events are related to each other, but first some reflections on the All-Star contest. It was a reasonably exciting game, as the American League built a 7-0 lead and then hung on for a 7-5 victory. With the American League’s lead in serious danger in the ninth inning, fans watching in person and on television witnessed the almost unthinkable: Boston manager Terry Francona calling on Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera to save the day. He did so easily with a game-ending strikeout.

Despite the excitement, however, the All-Star game remains controversial, not least because home-field advantage in the World Series now belongs to the league winning the All-Star game. That is a highly questionable innovation, bestowing a substantial Series advantage based on the outcome of an exhibition game. It would be more just to award home-field advantage to the Series participant with the better regular-season record, thus rewarding excellence over the long 162-game season.

At least, though, giving the game such weight has led participants, especially managers and players of teams currently in contention for the playoffs (and hence a chance to be playing in the World Series) to take the game seriously. That explains why Francona was happy to summon Rivera, and why Boston’s center fielder, Johnny Damon, offered his mortal enemy encouragement as he entered the game. If the Red Sox find themselves again in the Series, they want Fenway Park as often as possible.

Regrettably, the All-Star game continued to lose favor with television viewers, setting a record for lack of interest. Only 14 percent of television sets turned on were tuned to the game, down from 50 percent in 1967 (when, of course, there were far fewer television choices), and 1 percentage point below last year’s previous low record. The game’s Nielsen rating (the percentage of total television households watching the event) has declined from 25.6 in 1967 to 8.8 in 2004, falling to 8.1 this year. The decline also may reflect the ongoing steroids controversy, unhappiness with high player salaries, and the increasing cost of attending major league games, all of which have helped other sports make inroads into Americans’ sports allegiance.

Those who did not see the game also missed observing how truly international baseball has become. To cite only some of the participants not born within the fifty states: David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez from the Dominican Republic, Carlos Beltran from Puerto Rico, Bob Abreu from Venezuela, Carlos Lee and Mariano Rivera from Panama, Ichiro Suzuki from Japan, Andrew Jones from The Netherlands, Jason Bay from Canada, and Livan Hernandez from Cuba.

This international cast makes the Olympic decision all the more bewildering. With organized baseball increasingly drawing players from around the globe to play the game at its highest level, jettisoning the sport from Olympic competition makes little sense – unless, of course, the decision is viewed as an anti-American move. It should be remembered, though, that the Olympic baseball champion in three of the past four Olympics has been Cuba, not the United States. Since softball became a medal competition in 1996, though, U.S. women have dominated, taking the gold each time.

Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, has declared that baseball will be permitted back only if Major League Baseball permits its best players to compete and adopts more stringent anti-doping rules. The latter seems to be the direction in which baseball is heading, as it well should. The former requirement, though, effectively sets up an impossible requirement. The best players are major leaguers, but their season runs concurrently with Olympic competition. Major League Baseball obviously cannot suspend its operations for several weeks during the August pennant race to allow its top players to play in the Olympics. In the past, minor leaguers individually have been given the opportunity to compete, which should be good enough. And then what about softball, a sport largely devoid of drug scandals and which does not face the same impediment to sending its finest players to the Olympics?

Not only baseball enthusiasts, but all who desire a fair and honest approach on the part of the International Olympic Committee should care about what is really behind the IOC’s recent decisions.

Edward J. Rielly is a Westbrook resident, English professor at St. Joseph’s College, and widely published author with two books on baseball and American culture.