Should Major League Baseball Go To The Olympics?

With how much fun the Winter Olympics were with hockey, imagine what the Summer Olympics could be with baseball? 85% of Canada watched the USA/Canada Men's Olympic hockey final and the ratings in the United States were the highest for any hockey game outside of the last two games of the 1980 Olympics. Jayson Stark of ESPN.com (Insider access required) today pointed out that twice as many Americans watched that hockey game than watched the last game of the Angels-Yankees ALCS and eight million more than watched the World Series. So Stark posed to Bud Selig the question: Don't you think the commish would at least be thinking about whether to reconsider his stance that major league baseball players and the Olympics shouldn't ever mix?

I've debated this with my friends and myself over the past few days as well. Incorporating in Starks' and Selig's analysis here are the lists of Pros and Cons of having the Major League Baseball players play in the Summer Olympics. But I really want to hear what you think. Go to the comments and let me know your ideas if you're for or against MLB players in the Olympics and whether you agree with my plan more. Here we go:

Pros: The World Baseball Classic is a farce as currently constructed. Played in Spring Training, there is a disincentive for many players--hardly ready to go nine innings in a preseason game--from playing in it, especially pitchers. This would truly put baseball on the world stage, able to be seen in places like Europe and Asia where baseball is always trying to expand their breadth. The Olympics would essentially replace the All-Start game every 4 years so the interruption for baseball would occur only a quarter of the seasons. And baseball players in the Olympics are subject to the most stringent testing guidelines for anti-doping, proving once and for all who is now clean. Baseball isn't a physical game so injuring teammates isn't as much of an issue. Imagine what the top rosters would look like if teams couldn't opt their players out like the Yankees and others do for the WBC--especially the United States, the Dominican Republic, Japan, South Korea, Cuba and Puerto Rico (with Mexico and others as dark horses).

I disagree with Stark that the Summer Games are different than the Winter Games in popularity--I think there would be tremendous coverage/interest in seeing this. At least at this time of the season, pitchers can throw 100 pitches without injury, players can play 9 innings, and the best baseball in the world can finally be on truly a world stage as the "World Series" implies. Imagine Derek Jeter vs. Mariano Rivera or Jon Lester vs. David Ortiz. This would be a ton of fun--and it would ensure baseball would stay in the Olympics.

Cons: It wouldn't work with the schedule. I've tried to think ways around it, but the reality is it wouldn't, especially since the last two Summer Olympics ended in late August. Here's Bud's reasoning:

"The answer for practical reasons, and I want to be clear about this, is no," Selig said. "Look, we can't stop our season in the middle of our season. We condense 162 games into 182, 183 days. I worry a lot about November, as both of you know -- playoffs that stretch out. We're trying to compact them a little bit. … And so now, in the midst of our season -- the best part of the drawing season, I might add -- to tell our fans we're going away for 10 days or two weeks, it's not possible. It isn't pragmatically possible.

"Now did I love the Olympics? Yes. That game on Sunday was absolutely magnificent. It really brought out the best in sports. It's something I wish in some ways we could do. We do have the World Baseball Classic, which has worked out great. We're internationalizing our sport all over the world. You're going to be pleasantly surprised at the things that are going to happen in coming years. But just as a practical matter, and I want to underline the word -- practical, pragmatic, whatever you want -- that just isn't possible."

My Plan: Jayson Stark proposes a plan, instead to fix the WBC, but I have a better idea: if you can't join the Olympics, just hold the WBC during the All-Star break. Take off the time, get the teams set, and have a grand, old international spectacle that will take viewers away from anything else on TV. I think that they could condense it enough to fit it in the schedule and if you hold it only every four years, you're just delaying the World Series date that year. If you can have the World Series end in November once for the TV networks, then you can definitely do it again for a real World Baseball Classic. And instead of figuring out if someone's great, great uncle's friend lived in Italy once and assigning him to the Italy team, use Olympic standards for assigning teams and have GMs for those teams assigned to pick the players. You would gain all the pros above from the Olympics but would lose many of the cons--and you could control the broadcasting rights, a very lucrative endeavor for Major League Baseball, a league which is always trying to make more money.

Or maybe there's another way, I'll open up the comments to your thoughts...(and if you want 4 years of Insider Access and ESPN the Magazine for $13, check out Slickdeals)

Picture from the Cleveland Leader