NEWSLETTER
As you may recall, baseball is coming back to the Summer Olympics for the 2028 games in Los Angeles, which is great news for those of us who love international baseball competition. The World Baseball Classic last year was awesome.
That said, part of the allure of the WBC is the involvement of professional players from the highest levels around the world, including many from Major League Baseball. Because the Summer Olympics take place, you know, in the summer, you wouldn’t necessarily have the same ability to include current MLB players in the games.
… or would you:
It’s no surprise that the Olympic committee would want MLB players involved in the Olympic tournament, but what’s surprising is that the owners may actually consider permitting it. If the risks can be mitigated, though, then couldn’t you argue that the net benefit for all things baseball would actually make it valuable to MLB teams to have their players participating? It’s a lot of potential positive attention for your sport, no?
From The Athletic:
“Two other attendees at the presentation were cautiously optimistic, wanting more information first. Owners and general managers have always been hesitant to send big leaguers to the Olympics because of injury risks and the overall impact on baseball’s calendar. But if baseball’s portion of the Olympics lasted no longer than a week, one of the large fears might be mitigated.
Baseball’s portion of the Olympics also would be scheduled around the time that MLB would normally be on its All-Star break, in mid-July. The 2028 Olympic games are scheduled to run from July 14 to July 30, and baseball could potentially become one of the events to kick off the games.”
That makes it possible from a scheduling perspective, mitigating one of the big risks of allowing MLB players to leave their teams for a week+ and play in the Olympics. The other one, though – injury risk – is a lot harder to address. The best idea for now seems to be having the Olympic committee help cover the cost of insurance for the teams for those players, but it’s not hard to imagine that, if a key player were lost to injury in July, insurance covering the remainder of his salary is hardly the main issue. That’s gonna be a tough one to figure out, and it’s possible it’s just going to be a matter of a willingness to take the risk. Teams and players.
Obviously there’s a long way to go on this, but because it is complicated to sort out – and because it has value only if executed very, very well – I’m glad that the discussions are already underway. Note, by the way, we’ll get our next World Baseball Classic (2026) before the Olympics.
