Hope emerges for Olympic baseball

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Baseball executives are working on a plan they hope will return the sport to the Olympics.

International Baseball Federation president Aldo Notari was among those leading the effort Tuesday.

He was joined by Denis Oswald, president of the Association of Summer Olympic International Federations, which represents all 28 sports.

Bob DuPuy, Major League Baseball’s chief operating officer, left the World Series on Sunday to join the talks, which coincide with International Olympic Committee executive board meetings.

“We are trying to find ways to return to the Olympic Games as quickly as possible,” Notari told the Associated Press.

The IOC voted 54-50 in July against keeping baseball in the Olympics, with 53 votes in favor needed to remain. The move takes effect for the 2012 London Olympics.

Notari said it would take two or three days to develop strategies to push for a new vote at the IOC’s next general assembly in February, on the eve of the Turin Games.

At least one-third of the 115 IOC members would need to submit a motion to consider a new vote.

Then, half the membership would need to favor the motion. If that passed, the sport would require a majority in favor to win reinstatement.

The IOC also voted in July to cut softball, which fell one vote short of making the cut – 52-52, with one abstention. Softball also is seeking another vote in Italy.

“We’re optimistic it will be voted in Turin, and baseball and softball will be reinstated,” DuPuy said after arriving in Houston for Game 3 of the World Series. “We were encouraged.”

Baseball has been in the Olympics since 1992. Softball, for women only, made its Olympic debut in 1996. The sports were the first removed from the program since polo in 1936.

IOC members cited MLB’s unwillingness to let its players take part in the Olympics and the sport’s doping problems as major reasons for the decision to remove it from the games.

“But we’re only talking about the North American league. Japan sent its best players to Athens,” Notari said. “There are 100 million baseball players in the world.”

The IOC reviews the entire sports program after each Olympics.

IOC president Jacques Rogge said the games must maintain a maximum of 28 sports, 301 medal events and 10,500 athletes. No sport will be added unless one is dropped.