Baseball at the Summer Olympics had its unofficial debut at the 1904 Summer Games, and it became an official Olympic sport at the 1992 Summer Olympics. Baseball has a long history as an exhibition/demonstration sport in the Olympics prior to its receiving official medal status by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Olympic baseball is governed by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF). The event was last played in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing with South Korea taking the gold.
At the IOC meeting on July 7, 2005, baseball and softball were voted out of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom, becoming the first sport voted out of the Olympics since polo was eliminated from the 1936 Olympics. The elimination excised 16 teams and more than 300 athletes from the 2012 Olympics. The two slots left available by the IOC's elimination were subsequently filled by golf and rugby sevens in 2016. This decision was reaffirmed on February 9, 2006. In the stands during the 2008 bronze medal game between the U.S. and Japan, IOC head Jacques Rogge was interviewed by MLB.com's Mark Newman and cited various criteria for Baseball to earn its way back in: "To be on the Olympic program is an issue where you need universality as much as possible. You need to have a sport with a following, you need to have the best players and you need to be in strict compliance with WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency). And these are the qualifications that have to be met. When you have all that, you have to win hearts. You can win the mind, but you still must win hearts." It was officially decided in August 2009 at the IOC Board meeting in Berlin that baseball would also not be included in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
On April 1, 2011, the IBAF and the International Softball Federation announced they were preparing a joint proposal to revive play of both sports at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
In August 2011, Olympic news source Around the Rings reported that the ISF and IBAF would not rush into an Olympic proposal, and that the IBAF was working on forming a temporary commission to analyze the prospect of a joint proposal. "In the past, baseball and softball were running alone, and the result was that baseball and softball stayed out," IBAF president Riccardo Fraccari said in reference to their decades-long push for Olympic inclusion.
Read more about Baseball At The Summer Olympics: History, Medalists, Medal Table, Qualification, Competition, Participating Nations
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—Calvin Trillin (b. 1935)
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—Robert Frost (1874–1963)