2012 Softball Olmypic dreams killed by Easton

[Cookie]

As many Easton bats you see on softball fields jimbo should have grown a pair and pushed softball. For some bs political reason he bowed down and let them push him around. They didn't have to go find another coward, they had Jim Easton. No one will ever know if they could have persuaded someone else. There should have been a huge boycott on Easton bats to show him what a chump he is. Their are plenty of other bats out there just as good and better than Easton anyway.

[xxxYerOut]

"If Easton would not have abstained, softball would have been in."
Until the frogs running the Olympic committee got someone else to change their vote to suit their agenda.

You are probably right. I will have to agree with spysoftball.com. "It seems like Rogge is the Richelieu on this one."

It wouldn't be the first time Frenchie was caught pulling from the bottom of the deck. Was that the Olympics when the ice skating judges got caught trading votes?

[Tucson]

I have 7 expensive bats in the garage. There is not an Easton among them. I will not give him a cent.

[daylightkate]

You know what? I never did understand how Toilet paper on a stick was an Olympic Sport! I guess if there was a boycot on Easton equipment, they could always donate their bats to rythmic gymnastics and get a little charmin in there.

[MTR]

Don't misunderstand me, the failure of the IOC to keep softball as an Olympic sport consitutes one of the great tragedies of modern women's sports. That said, let's not be hypocrites here. Two weeks of softball every four years will not "make" fastpitch softball

Not only did it make it, it paid for it. The blast of registrations after the 1996 Olympics wasn't the result of some big time Madison Ave. ad man selling it.

It is the failure of the Amatuer Softball Association, big time universities, high school athletic departments, sports broadcasting networks, and local community fan support that has kept softball from catapulting into the national spot light.

What a bunch of crap. If the sport hasn't been in the national spotlight how do you explain record crowds in OKC and record numbers of viewers worldwide for the NCAA Championships and the World Cup of Softball? There is also the NPF which seems that if they can hang on for another year, they may be able to expand to the West coast.

BTW, it is the ISF's job to support the game in the Olympics.

ASA shares a huge part of the blame for its failure to promote fastpitch on a national and international stage.

Not quite. ASA's mission is to promote a competitive balance and maintain the integrity of the game of softball and to provide a platform to determine a national champion.

I for one would gladly agree to an extra $5 fee for each of the 8 million girls playing ASA softball in this country.

Again, not quite. Even if you allowed for 20 players per roster, there would still be less than 2 million girls playing JO ball. And maybe you would pay it, but there are thousands out there that will not.

The additional $40 million in revenue would allow ASA to buy network time to broadcast the national championship games, states, (ie., Little League World Series), generating more viewership, more interest, eventually more sponsorships, etc.

I wish it were that easy and you now have actually less than $10 million to spend based on your plan. As you have noted, who is going to watch all these telecasts? The 18U Gold was pulled from ESPN because the time slots were supposedly not acceptable for ASA.

The IOC, ESPN, NBC, CBS, etc. will carry women's softball when the world demands it. Until then, let's stop begging for Olympic scraps and promote the sport at home. Just one opinion.

It is unfortunate, but I don't believe this is a "demand" that will ever occur.

[MTR]

BTW, Jacques Rogge is not French, but Belgian.

[ssarge]

There is certainly at least antecdotal evidence that Rogge persuaded Easton to abstain in return for a pledge to support his re-election to the committee (his term wass expiring).

Easton subsequently lost his re-election bid - badly.

Hopefully, that account isn't true. Because it is horrible if it is true. Hard to justify the abstention under any circumstance. If Easton felt he couldn't vote on this kind of thing because of his business interests, he never should have been on the committee.


All that said, it simply accelerated what was probably inevitable. The vote to eliminate SB and BB wasn't primarily an anti-American vote (the USA BB team didn't even QUALIFY for the last Olympics).

The bigger issue was that SB was identified with BB. And the IOC was very miffed at baseball. Because MLB wouldn't agree to shut down play for two weeks during the Olympics (as the NHL does during the Winter Olympics). And so players from countries such as the Dominican, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, etc. would not have access to their players under contract to MLB teams. A baseball issue, but softball was caught up in it. (I don't know if that was the right decision for MLB or not - but Selig made $14.5 MILLION last year. This should have been handled better.)

Plus the politics involved around limiting the number of sports in the Olympics. I forget the exact number (something like 28 for men and 28 for women) - but there is a finite number of sports allowed under Olympic charter. And a general desire of the IOC to make these (28) sports which can be staged less expensively, because they would like more cities to be able to legitimately compete to host an Olympics. Softball and baseball competitions are liimited to 8 participating teams, one of whom is the host country. Meaning only 7 of the 200 participating Olympic nations can play. Too exclusive. Plus, the sports generally require dedicated facilities which may have to be built in many of the world's cities. Expensive.

But the MLB refusal was apparently the big thing. I think SB's only chance of re-inclusion - and I am nowhere near as optimistic this will happen as are many - is to create an identity separate from BB.

Regards,

Scott

[Travel Ball]

MTR: Sort of a defeatist attitude, and your logic doesn't quite make sense. Seems like what we need is a Madison Avenue type to sell softball to the world like they sold us soccer.

Also, $10 million buys a ton of air time on USA, TNT, LifeTime, We, etc. My DD doesn't care when it's broadcast, she and a few hundred thousand of her friends are going to watch it. (ASA website says 1.3 million youth in JO softball; I think the 8 million included adult softball).

[Demonboy]

There is certainly at least antecdotal evidence that Rogge persuaded Easton to abstain in return for a pledge to support his re-election to the committee (his term wass expiring).

Easton subsequently lost his re-election bid - badly.

Hopefully, that account isn't true. Because it is horrible if it is true. Hard to justify the abstention under any circumstance. If Easton felt he couldn't vote on this kind of thing because of his business interests, he never should have been on the committee.


All that said, it simply accelerated what was probably inevitable. The vote to eliminate SB and BB wasn't primarily an anti-American vote (the USA BB team didn't even QUALIFY for the last Olympics).

The bigger issue was that SB was identified with BB. And the IOC was very miffed at baseball. Because MLB wouldn't agree to shut down play for two weeks during the Olympics (as the NHL does during the Winter Olympics). And so players from countries such as the Dominican, Cuba, Mexico, Japan, etc. would not have access to their players under contract to MLB teams. A baseball issue, but softball was caught up in it. (I don't know if that was the right decision for MLB or not - but Selig made $14.5 MILLION last year. This should have been handled better.)

Plus the politics involved around limiting the number of sports in the Olympics. I forget the exact number (something like 28 for men and 28 for women) - but there is a finite number of sports allowed under Olympic charter. And a general desire of the IOC to make these (28) sports which can be staged less expensively, because they would like more cities to be able to legitimately compete to host an Olympics. Softball and baseball competitions are liimited to 8 participating teams, one of whom is the host country. Meaning only 7 of the 200 participating Olympic nations can play. Too exclusive. Plus, the sports generally require dedicated facilities which may have to be built in many of the world's cities. Expensive.

But the MLB refusal was apparently the big thing. I think SB's only chance of re-inclusion - and I am nowhere near as optimistic this will happen as are many - is to create an identity separate from BB.

Regards,

Scott

Scott absolutely crushes it out of the park. Was that "PCR"?

[Demonboy]

"If Easton would not have abstained, softball would have been in."
Until the frogs running the Olympic committee got someone else to change their vote to suit their agenda.

Actually I agree with you Spazdad. But to me, it's a seperate discussion and has no bearing
on whether or not Jim Bob Easton is a tool (and he is).

By the way the "Frog" is from Belgium.