Baseball's pitch for 2016

The World Baseball Classic championship game was not only a 10-reel thriller; it was an international celebration of the sport.  

And it may have been the ultimate pitch for the inclusion of the sport at the Olympic Games. 

That's the hope of International Baseball Federation president Harvey Schiller, who saw the future brighten a bit during Japan's 5-3 win over South Korea in 10 innings Monday night.  

"The television ratings [in Japan and South Korea] were the highest in their history,'' he said in Denver at SportAccord.  "We're a prominent sport. We're the national sport of probably 18 to 20 different countries. I always said that if we hadn't been in the Olympics, the IOC would be begging us to come in.''

During the second World Baseball Classic, fans in Japan rocked the Tokyo Dome. Korean fans shook thunder sticks. Canadians were abuzz in Toronto for a game against America. 

Netherlands beat the Dominican Republic twice. China won its first WBC game.  Japan beat the US in the semifinals, then outlasted South Korea in the title showdown, which was the first WBC game ever shown in China.  

"I don't know if you can name any other team sport in or out of the Olympics that has that level of play,'' Schiller said. 

Baseball, which had been an official Olympic sport since 1992, was eliminated from the 2012 London Games by the IOC.  The sport's not-quite-global popularity at the time of the decision (2005) and Major League Baseball's decision not to allow its best players suit up for the Games are cited as possible reasons for its removal from the program.  After making its pitch to the IOC program commission in Lausanne in November, Schiller said the baseball delegation was asked if it could deliver major leaguers in 2016.

"One of the things that's important to the Olympic movement is that the host country have a competitive team. And each of those countries has a competitive team,'' said Schiller, whose delegation is competing against rugby, karate, roller sports, squash and softball. 

The October vote to add new sports comes after the vote to select the 2016 host city.  Chicago and Tokyo are obvious fits for baseball, but so are Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, claims Schiller. 

"The other six sports are certainly worthy, but we think we deserve to be on the program. If I was the IOC I'd look at the fact we're No. 1 in electronic games. McDonald's did their largest sponsorship for the Classic, bigger than the Olympics. 

"We'll keep pushing. One of our efforts certainly is to make sure we play clean. We have a strong anti-drug effort. We're growing the sport. We not only have been growing the sport in China the last eight or nine years, we're doing it today. We have two people who've been signed to the minor leagues from India.

"We're doing a million and one things.''