ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Major League Baseball players’ participation in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles remains a possibility, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said, though many obstacles still prevent Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge and Bryce Harper from playing for a gold medal.
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Baseball was a competitive sport from 1992 to 2008, then was abandoned until the 2021 Tokyo Games, when MLB allowed only players not on 40-man rosters to participate. Even then, many eligible prospects were barred from playing by their clubs.
Although baseball was scrapped for this year’s Paris Olympics, it has been reinstated for 2028. LA 2028 chairman Casey Wasserman gave a presentation to MLB owners in February on how major league players could participate.
“I talked to Casey last week. We talked about what could be done. What exactly would that look like? What are the tradeoffs that we would have to make in terms of the season? So I’m open-minded about that,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
“I think what I found most compelling about Casey’s point is that we need to forget about what’s going to happen with baseball in the Olympics in the long term, because I think we all know that when you’re in Paris, they’re probably not going to build a baseball stadium, right?” Manfred added. “But when you’re in Los Angeles, you’re focused on Los Angeles. That’s an opportunity that we need to think about.”
Japan beat the United States in the 2021 Olympics final with a strengthened national team when Nippon Professional Baseball suspended its season.
The issue is who pays for major league players’ insurance. And even in the World Baseball Classic, a project of MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association, many top players have been blocked by their teams, especially starting pitchers. At last year’s WBC, Mets relief pitcher Edwin Diaz tore his right patellar tendon while celebrating a victory in Puerto Rico and missed the 2023 season.
“The feedback we’ve gotten so far from the players is that they’re interested in participating if the opportunity presents itself,” union chief Tony Clark told the BBWAA, speaking before Manfred. “So we expect, at least at this point, based on the feedback we’ve gotten, that that’s a discussion that we’re going to consider having. But the players will determine if and to what extent that’s something that needs to be built upon, not just for 2028, but I think it’s probably an important discussion to have beyond 2028, knowing that the opportunity to have it in 2028 could be a building block for this to be more consistent in the Olympics going forward.”
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