Japan's 'baseball king' lobbies for sport to be reintroduced to Olympics

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Japan's 'baseball king' lobbies for sport to be reintroduced to Olympics

By Jon Day (Xinhua) 19:36, September 02, 2013

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Japan is counting on a combined bid to see softball and baseball merged into a single confederation and reintroduced as an Olympic sport and celebrities from the sport are lobbying hard ahead of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) vote on Sept. 7 in Buenos Aires to see it included in 2020, ahead of squash and wrestling.

Baseball and softball featured at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 but were dropped by the IOC with its president Jacques Rogge stating that baseball lacked a global following with internationally-recognized first-rate athletes and had been overshadowed by doping scandals, which have tarnished the image of the sport.

Many Japanese baseball players, fans and ambassadors of the sport, however, are lobbying to see its return to the Olympic platform and Sadaharu Oh, known as Japan's "baseball king," believes Japan's national sport should be reintroduced ahead of wrestling and squash for the single spot still available.

"If Tokyo wins the honor to host the Olympic Games in 2020, I believe baseball and softball competitions will deliver the peak of Olympic sport," Oh said in a statement issued by the World Baseball Softball Confederation.

For the Beijing Olympics Japan sent its top-flight players and Oh said that all countries should follow suit to show the quality and excitement of the game on a global scale.

"I believe every major league around the world should find a way to make its best players available for the Olympic Games," Oh said.

The 73-year-old Oh hit 868 home runs over a 22-year career with the Yomiuri Giants in Tokyo. He also holds the Japanese record of 55 homers in a single season. He said that if Japan were to host the 2020 Olympic Games and go on to win a gold medal, it would provide the fans with an opportunity of a lifetime.

"The electrifying atmosphere of Japan playing at home for the gold medal would give the ballplayers and fans the most unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experience," the homer hero said.

But despite Oh's efforts and those of the World Baseball Softball Confederation and the World Children's Baseball Foundation, who jointly hosted what local media described as "one of the world's most widespread international youth clinics" this August in Fukui Prefecture, with more than 130 children, representing five continents and 13 countries, in the six-day "World Children's Baseball Fair," the sport is facing a strong challenge from wrestling.

Wrestling was cut from the Olympic program in February, having been an Olympic mainstay in all but one of every Games ever held.

Pundits say that on the back of the sport's governing body FILA, and the efforts of its President, Nenad Lalovic, who took over FILA within days of the IOC's decision to eliminate wrestling from the Olympics after the 2016 Rio Games, the sport may see Japanese baseball fans disappointed in 2020.

After the IOC decided the sports wasn't viewer friendly, the federation overhauled the sport and made changes to freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, which have earned favorable reviews from Rogge and at least two of the candidates in line to succeed him as IOC president.

The ancient sport, which will also likely get a boost from its claimed origins in ancient Greece, the birthplace of the Games, along with squash and a combination of baseball and softball, will make their final bids to the full IOC assembly and will claim that, in contrast to the other sports, wrestling is a "pure, global, evolving and all-inclusive sport that's long been the essence of the Olympic movement," according to an official FILA statement.

As for the final decision on who will host the Games, pundits state that Tokyo may have the edge over Madrid and Istanbul.

"When the results finally emerge, I believe we will be given a high marks, so I will do my utmost," Tsunekazu Takeda, the chairman of Tokyo's 2020 Olympic bid committee told local media recently.

"The media decides who is in the lead and the media decides if we're on the same line," Takeda said. "They might call us the front-runner, but I always feel like we're in the same position."

Following Spain's financial troubles and civil unrest in Turkey as well as an escalating crisis in neighboring Syria, pundits attest that Japan and its capital city Tokyo may be the "safest" bet.

However, the IOC will be mindful of the current radioactive leak at the stricken Daiichi nuclear facility, 250 km northeast of Tokyo, that has seen more than 300 tons of toxic water leak into the Pacific Ocean.

The final vote will be carried out by the IOC in a secret ballot in Buenos Aires on Sept. 7.