New Olympic programme criteria

The end of this Associated Press report contains some information about an important development affecting baseball's future as an Olympic sport:

... the IOC formally accepted the criteria for judging which sports should be on the Olympic program. Three years ago, members put off a motion to drop baseball, softball and modern pentathlon from the games, and no changes will be made before the 2012 Olympics.

Among the key points to be considered are global participation, spectator attendance, media interest, the sport's anti-doping policies and whether the sport features the world's best athletes in the Olympics."

This is all bad news for baseball. While case can be made for the global participation criterion, the US professional leagues' bad reputation on anti-doping has been made an Olympic-related issue this year by the two minor leaguers banned from the Greek squad for doping. Furthermore, "participation of its best players" criterion is clearly a jab at Major League Baseball for its unwillingness to cooperate so that the world's best players to compete. A season shortened by a couple of weeks every four years is hardly an imposition, as the National Hockey League has shown.