Big Leaguers did play in the Olympics

by Riccardo Schiroli

In 2003 I had been covering baseball games for almost 20 years and I was the press officer for the Italian Federation. So I thought my next move was going to be covering the Olympic Games.

Italy had qualified in July, winning all the games of a tournament played in The Netherlands. In the Fall I had travelled to Panama to cover the qualifier of the Americas. Now that some time has passed, I can do my outing: that tournament was a joke. Venezuela and the Dominican Republic didn’t show up, the organizers had to rewrite the schedule many times and they ended up playing a first part of the tournament for no reason, since the top 4 of each group were going to advance to a second round and one of the groups was made of 4 teams.
Team USA lost their first game 2-1 against Mexico. Left handed slider specialist Isidro Marquez fooled a line up made mostly of left handers. Unfortunately, that was it for Team USA (the defending Olympic champion) in the tournament. It was an elimination game.
“We have a surprise here” smiled someone representing the IBAF. He couldn’t hide his satisfaction. I couldn’t understand why. Today I wonder if the organizers of the London Games are happy because Spain (defending world and european champion) is out of the soccer tournament.

People have always blamed baseball for not having Major League players to the Olympics. In Panama, people were blaming Team USA manager Frank Robinson for not pitching his Big Leaguer against Mexico. Horacio Ramirez, 24 those days, had a 12-4 winning record in the National League for the Braves. But he appeared not on the MLB active roster as of July 31st and that was enough to allow him on the team.

In 2004 it was not easy for me to make it to the Games. It was just a 90 minute flight from Rome, but my problem was that nobody wanted to issue a credential for me. I was very likely going to be the only european journalist to cover the baseball tournament and I had heard they wanted to make baseball “more visible” in Europe. But not through my reports, actually.
But I made it to Athens. Sitting in the stands and reporting through my cell phone, that I used as a modem. It was not easy, but was a lot of fun indeed. Also because the tournament featured some great players. Greece had Nick Markakis as their right fielder, Japan a bunch of stars of their NPB (including Matzuzaka, Jojima and Nakamura, who were going to be in the Majors soon).

While in Athens, talks of baseball out of the programme were daily routine.
“You do not have Major League players” people sentenced.
I tried to explain that actually Big Leaguers had been representing their countries since Sydney. Ben Sheets, the winning pitcher of the gold medal game for Team USA, won 11 games the year after for the Brewersand made it all the way to the All Star Game. Doug Mientkiewicz had already played 129 games in the Big Leagues (Minnesota Twins) before playing in Sydney for Team USA.
Dave Nilsson, the catcher for Australia, had played 115 games for the Brewers in 1999, hitting 21 home runs.

How come baseball was not able to tell the World that Big Leaguers had actually represented their countries in the Olympics?
And how come baseball was not able to tell the world that Yu Darvish, the 26 year old pitcher who signed a 5 year US $ 60 million contract for the Texas Rangers (who had payed $ 51 million only to have the right to negotiate) earlier this year, had represented Japanin 2008.
You may say that in 2008 he was not a Big Leaguer. He was the Nippon Ham Fighters opening day starter and was making 270 million yen that season in Japan (something like $ 3 million). So, he was not a Major League Baseball player, but who could deny he was a Big Leaguer?

Now that the 2012 Olympics have opened, people start to realize that baseball is not there. The good news is that the attitude of the media seems to be different.
In San Francisco, journalists asked Nate Schierholtz (now a regular on the Giants‘ roster) about a picture that dates back to Bejing. Schierholtz is pictured while charging Team China‘s catcher to score a run.
“It’s an experience I’ll cherish forever” said Schierholtz, who was part of a bronze medal team USA.
Other writers have been looking for former Olympians, after the Schierholtz story. For instance, the Wall Street Journal found out that 4 members of the New York Mets (pitcher R. A. Dickey in Atlanta, pitcher Jon Rauch in Sydney, together with General Manager Sandy Alderson, who was in charge of selection and first base coach Tom Goodwin in Seoul) have connections to the Olympics.

The media, of course, have also changed attitude after the IBAF and the International Softball Federation (ISF) announced a plan to merge. A single International Federation could bid to see baseballand softball in the programme as 2 different disciplines and not different sports.
Since this created a promising situation, now it’s the time to try once again to let the world now how much glory there is in the history of Olympic Baseball.