Beijing 2008 to be Final Baseball Olympics?

Commissioner Bud Selig declared dead any movement that would allow Major League Baseball players to take part in the Summer Olympics.

"We've talked a lot about it," said Selig, visiting Jacobs Field on Monday as part of his summerlong tour of baseball cities. "I don't really see it, because you can't stop a pennant race. Imagine now if I said, 'We're not gonna play today for 10 days.' It's not pragmatic."

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What he did say will come, however, is a continuing effort to make baseball a more global game. He pointed to efforts to play more ballgames on foreign soil as one way to reach more fans in cities and countries outside the North America.

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So, during Selig's tenure we won't see MLB players going to the Olympics. There is something to be said for that. Adopting the solution the Japanese have chosen (every team releasing 2 players for 2 weeks) would raise a problem because MLB has more nationalities than NPB.

The real reason he doesn't want to participate, of course, is money. In their perception they would lose huge amounts of money without getting anything in return. They have looked at U.S. basketball and saw that those teams don't really generate anything. So if MLB is going to let players participatre in the Olympic Games, they want something in return. Knowing Americans, it will have to be financial compensation of some sort (part of Olympic TV deal money?). But that is no deal.

So at this point it seems likely that we won't see baseball return after 2008.