Baseball made its debut as an official Olympic medal sport at the 1992 Barcelona Games, following a positive vote by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1986.
Manuel Gonzalez Guerra came out of the 91st IOC Session on 13 October 1986 and went straight to International Baseball Association (IBA) President Robert Smith. What the Cuban IOC Member had to say was that baseball had been voted a medal sport.
Smith was in Lausanne, Switzerland, together with IBA Vice Presidents Ichiro Yamamoto of Japan and Aldo Notari of Italy, who would succeed him as president in 1993. Secretary-General Cas Pielak (Canada) was also present for the historic moment.
Notari compared baseball becoming an Olympic sport to having a child.
"It is difficult to describe how I feel, we have just reached the goal we have been fighting for throughout our lives," Notari said. "It is the same kind of joy a father experiences when he has his first son."
Building the case for Olympic Baseball
Gonzalez Guerra had been himself instrumental to the project of Olympic Baseball. He was named the president of AINBA (Asociación Internacional Béisbol Amateur), the governing body that resulted in 1976 in the merging of the competing FIBA (Féderacion Internacional de Béisbol Amateur) and FEMBA (Féderacion Mundial de Béisbol Amateur).
Smith changed the name of the governing body to IBA after the 1984 elections. At the time, Smith was known as "Baseball's number one lobbyist" (The Chicago Sun), mainly because of the success baseball enjoyed as an Olympic demonstration sport at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
The IOC inserted baseball as a demonstration sport at the LA '84 Games with the Los Angeles Dodgers having provided an insurance plan.
"We guaranteed against losses," recalled Peter O'Malley, then the principal owner of the Dodgers. "I was confident that the games in Dodger Stadium would be successful."
No insurance was needed, as Olympic baseball attendance was averaging a staggering 48,000 spectators per game. At the end of the baseball tournament, won by Japan, IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch was quoted as follows: "The success of baseball in Los Angeles convinced me, baseball can be a medal sport."
Historic Return
After being absent at the 2012 and 2016 Games, on 3 August 2016, the IOC voted for the return Olympic baseball and softball at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
All of the quotes are extracted from the book The Game We Love.
