Baseball/softball out at the Olympics...

[scarletandgrey]

Interesting week for Jennie Finch. She gets the cover of Sports Illustrated (over Venus winning Wimbledon), and then they drop softball from the Olympics.

Picture?

It is sad that they have removed baseball and softball. I really don't see the reason behind it. Maybe we will get lucky and they'll add football to the winter games..

 

[sandgk]

Don't forget how huge baseball is in Central America and northern South America, and also Korea. Cricket blows because it takes a week to finish a match...they'll be playing until the next Olympics.

You want to eliminate a sport, ditch ping pong. The only countries that play it are Asian and Indonesian countries. Malaysians learn ping pong at the malaria clinics, waiting for their shots. In fact, the name of the sport comes from its inventors: Ping Hei Yu and Pong Hei Wat...

Personally I am not in favor of having cricket in the Olympics. However, Mili, it does not take a week to get through the kind of match used in a knock-out competition. Typically number of overs are limited per side. The whole match is over within space of one day -- typically running between 11:00 AM and 5:30 PM.
So it could be done, though like you I don't want to see cricket in the Olympics. My reasoning is just that it isn't sufficiently universal, plus there are plenty of good international competition matches already (probably too many). Finally, just as would be the case with Baseball you have the games going on during the height of professional competition -- and the club sides might not want to release their players for another 2-4 week stretch.

Ping-pong -- that's a kids game, though played at a very high level internationally. Let them have it in there or not, I don't care.

What I want out of the Olympics are all the beauty events. If it isn't strictly higher faster stronger or a true team sport (yep like Rugby) then I argue it should be given a back-burner.

So, top of my list of kick to the turf "sports" are those with Rythmic or Synchronized in the title. Then we can work down to the events that demand getting a vote from a panel of judges, instead of a stopwatch, a scorecard or a tape-measure.

 

[BB73]

Picture?

It is sad that they have removed baseball and softball. I really don't see the reason behind it. Maybe we will get lucky and they'll add football to the winter games..

Silly me.

 

[High Lonesome]

Yeah, but you were just checkin out T&A!

My point is that even in the US that most people don't know much about girls softball (other than the pitchers deliver really takes some getting used to). Around the world the interest/knowledge is substantially less. Little global interest added with an ass pasting by the US is not going to help the cause of longevity.

Actually I cheated worse than that

Cat osterman = 2 time national player of the year and a texas longhorn(lesbo?)

Jenny Finch = national media coverage and really hot(straight)

Lisa Fernandez = greatest alltime? and anouncer while im looking for but(i dont know about her sexuality and don't care either)

Lindsey Gardner = Katy High School and played for texas(big time lesbo)

Tiffany Anders = Katy High School and played for texas(lesbo? i don't know wouldnt suprise me)

i really don't know shit about softball, but as you correctly assumed, I watch for the tail.

 

[BuckeyeTrail]

if a sport's biggest international event is NOT the olympics...then it should not be in the olympics.

soccer is a fantastic sport. but they have the world cup. why does there need to be soccer in the olympics?

the problem with the olympics, in america, is that for some reason NBC gears its coverage towards women. in the last olympics, the prime-time block was filled with gymnastics, diving, I even saw an event that consisted of JUMPING ON A TRAMPOLINE.

the olympics were originally just track and field....now they've added so many other ridiculous events that the prestige of winning a gold medal has been diminished.

i really wouldn't care about all the other events, however, if NBC wasn't so stupid about their programming. in the last olympics, the prime-time coverage was a four-hour block from 8 pm to midnight...the problem was, they wouldn't fucking tell you WHICH events were being shown at what time. If I wanted to watch the men's 100 meter dash, I would have to sit through 4 hours of nonsense. It also doesn't help when espn, the radio, etc. tells you who won the race in the afternoon (as it's on tape-delay).

Put all the female or female-like events on lifetime, and put all the competitive, grand male events (or events in which the females are really hot) on primetime on NBC.

Also, if a gold medal winner happens to be from a country that is not the U.S......it's not unpatriotic to occasionally show the athlete shedding a tear as he hears his own national anthem. The world's greatest miler, a Moroccan, suffered agonizing defeats in '96 and '00 before finally winning in dramatic fashion in Athens. Did NBC bother to show the man, who on an international scale, was probably the biggest star of the olympics, finally get to hear his country's anthem? Nope. But I did to get to hear the star-spangled banner about 3 million times. Newsflash: It's not an achievement that we won the gold in women's softball. Very few countries play softball, and very few countries have women that play sports. We Americans love to celebrate gold medals in sports that we invent, and that barely anybody else plays.

I love living in america and i love our sports....but god, during the summer olympics, I wish I wasn't here.

 

[JCOSU86]

I saw them practice once....
Are they still almost completely all-Indian?

Looks like it according to their latest stats

Name M/P I/P N/O's Runs 50's 100's H/S Avg

Vineet Vashisht 3 3 0 143 1 0 80 47.67
Raj 3 3 1 115 1 0 57 57.5
Kirti Vansadia 3 3 1 91 1 0 77 45.5
Sumedha DeSilva 3 2 2 62 0 0 32 62
Akshay Joglekar 3 2 0 44 0 0 44 22
Neeraj 1 1 0 40 0 0 40 40
Parminder Singh Gandhi 2 2 1 21 0 0 13 21
Viral Patlikar 3 1 0 10 0 0 10 10
Abhishek Reddy 3 1 0 9 0 0 9 9
Shuchi Kurana 1 1 0 3 0 0 3 3
Vikas Vashisht 2 1 0 1 0 0 1 1
Vishwanath 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Vikram Kewalramani 2 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
Krishnan 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Jai Prakash

Raj? The guy's whole name is "Raj"? What, is he doing a Brazil thing there?

 

[scooter1369]

You guys are fogetting a key player in softball in Alicia Hollowell (P, Arizona)

As a softball coach, I'm a little disappointed in members of this baord that discount it as a legit sport. Attend a few Buckeye games next year and learn something. At the collegiate level, softball is a damn hard game to play. This isn't lob pitch, drink a beer while playing first base, 40 yearold men running bases, softball. Come out and see Kim Reeder pitch for the Bucks and see Koko (Nykole Koyano) at second base and tell me this isn't a sport.

These girls can flat out fucking play.

 

[scooter1369]

I think what killed softball was the total humiliation of the world last time by the americans. When you go through an olympics winning by 5 or more runs and just totally paste the second best team in the world in the gold medal game then you are leaving yourself open to elimination.

Perfect assessment of the demise of Olympic Softball.

 

[OSUsushichic]

You guys are fogetting a key player in softball in Alicia Hollowell (P, Arizona)

As a softball coach, I'm a little disappointed in members of this baord that discount it as a legit sport. Attend a few Buckeye games next year and learn something. At the collegiate level, softball is a damn hard game to play. This isn't lob pitch, drink a beer while playing first base, 40 yearold men running bases, softball. Come out and see Kim Reeder pitch for the Bucks and see Koko (Nykole Koyano) at second base and tell me this isn't a sport.

These girls can flat out fucking play.

Amen, Scooter.

 

[Muck]

It is sad that they have removed baseball and softball. I really don't see the reason behind it.

They killed baseball because MLB refused to shut down for the Olympics.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

Baseball is huge in the Americas and Japan. Unfortunately the rest of the world plays cricket instead.

Latin America and Korea would strongly disagree.

 

[Captain Hindsight]

There's the WBC. Which is kind of the same, and it gets the same shitty ratings and enthusiasm that Olympic baseball gets.

 

[scooter1369]

There's the WBC. Which is kind of the same, and it gets the same shitty ratings and enthusiasm that Olympic baseball gets.

No one expected it to draw a huge following the first year. With time, the WBC will gain in popularity.

 

[Muck]

No one expected it to draw a huge following the first year. With time, the WBC will gain in popularity.

I'm pretty sure it was also created at least partially as an alternative to pros playing in the Olympics.

 

[BuckStocksHere]

Sushi - Whether you think I don't know shit like you said, the truth is I do. You are entitled to your opinion as am I. What a country. It's called America and you live in it.

I never said the girls, and I use that term loosely, weren't good at what they did. But shit, I can find a bunch of other "sports" where people are good and I don't consider them olympic level sports.

Darts, pool, chess, poker, eating hot dogs, water skiing, boche ball, the list is many.

Amen, Scooter.