Russian Baseball vs. IOC Arseholes

There I am, peacefully eating bkfst while watching EuroNews on TV, and the Sports segment comes on with the announcement that the Int'l Olympic Committee, in its wisdom, has decided to add to the Games a sport we've all been, y'know, just pining away for-- women's boxing.

OK, this wouldn't really bother me if

(1) the same IOC hadn't recently decided to drop another -- and far more popular -- women's sport, softball, as well as a sport played worldwide which drew huge crowds at its last Olympics-- baseball; and

(2) dropping Olympic baseball didn't really hurt the game's chances where I live, which it does. Check it out below (esp. the last paragraphs in this context). This is basically an upbeat piece, but...but...I'm still steamed!

Russians want baseball to grow
AFP
August 11, 2009

It's the bottom of the ninth, but there are men on base and sluggers on deck as baseball enthusiasts in Russia go into bat for America's pastime.

"The situation is slowly, but surely, changing for the better despite the obstacles," says Yury Kopylov, head of Russia's baseball and softball federation.

"This year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of baseball in Russia."

Baseball made its debut in Russia in the 1930s, when American migrants fleeing the Great Depression made their way to the Soviet Union hoping to find a better life -- and a place to play baseball.

Teams were established in Moscow, Leningrad, Nizhny Novgorod and other major Soviet cities.

The newcomers even set up an organized league, where American teams clashed with local sides for the Soviet baseball title.

The Communist powers at the time even went so far as to classify baseball as a new "national" sport in the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin's apparent willingness to play ball in the early 1930s however came to an abrupt end in 1937 with the start of the internal security crackdown of the The Terror.

Suddenly, baseball players were viewed with official suspicion, arrested and accused of espionage while the sport itself was re-classified as a bourgeois pursuit alien to Soviet morality.

The sport was later totally banned.

It was only in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union itself began to fall apart, that the sport started to make a timid reappearance in the fields of Russia.

It was then that baseball was included in the programme for the summer Olympics, giving the Kremlin the ideological cover it needed to ease restrictions on the sport.

The Soviet national federation of baseball and sofball was established and the first national baseball championship took place in 1989, with 24 teams battling for the title.

Baseball began to take root again in Russia, with the number of national league teams gradually expanding to 50 along with a steady growth in the numbers of actual players.

Despite the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia continued to cultivate baseball, creating a ruling body in 1992 that quickly joined the International Baseball Federation (IBAF).

But development of baseball in Russia then took another hit with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) striking the game off its list of sports for the 2012 Games.

Kopylov, who admits he faces an uphill struggle to promote baseball in Russia, lamented the IOC's decision, noting that baseball competitions in recent Olympic Games had been hugely popular.

"Even at the Athens Olympics, baseball games attracted at least 10,000 spectators a day despite the fact that baseball was completely foreign to the local public," he said.

"The exclusion of baseball from the Olympic programme was a mistake," he added. "It is a very democratic and dynamic game and I hope it will soon regain Olympic status."

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