Big leaguers may balk at Olympic baseball – Washington Times

Baseball appears set to return to the Olympics for the 2020 Tokyo Games. Major leaguers may balk.

“It’s not going to happen. I don’t think it’s fathomable,” Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw said.

Astros shortstop Carlos Correa wasn’t sure he’d play for a gold medal even if he could.

“2020 will be my year before free agency,” he said. “We’ll see in 2020 what my situation is, and we’ll go from there.”

Baseball became a medal sport for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics but was dropped for the 2012 London Games and won’t be played this year in Rio de Janeiro.

With the 2020 Games in Japan, where baseball is popular, the International Olympic Committee executive board voted this week to support a six-nation tournament that year in both baseball and women’s softball. The full IOC is to vote in August.

Chicago Cubs star Kris Bryant is torn.

“I wore ‘USA’ across my chest one time in college, and it was an awesome experience. It’d be fun to do that again,” he said. “But baseball season’s so long the way it is. You play 162 games and to add another two weeks, I don’t know if it would be the best decision for ourselves and our bodies.”

Because the Tokyo Olympics are from July 24-Aug. 9, Major League Baseball would have to interrupt its schedule, a 162-game-in-183-day grind that has little flexibility unless owners and the players’ association are willing to cut games – and lose revenue.

“I will not comment until I have a chance to review the recommendation,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday.

Speaking to the Associated Press Sports Editors in April 2015, Manfred sounded reticent.

“The Olympics are a challenge because of the calendar,” he said then. “They are particularly a challenge when the site is halfway around the world and the date falls in the middle of our regular season.”

He urged the World Baseball Softball Confederation to push for inclusion in multiple Olympics, which could become a bargaining position in negotiations among MLB, the MLBPA and the IOC.

“Conceptually, I think it would be good for our game, for baseball generically defined, to be an Olympic sport,” Manfred told APSE. “I think it would be a mistake for our sport to make an arrangement with the Olympics whereby we go in for Tokyo and not have some commitment that the Olympics were going to commit to baseball over the longer haul.”

The IOC wants the top players to appear in the Olympics. The NBA has sent its players since 1992 and the NHL since 1998 – although the NHL has not yet committed for the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

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