Will baseball return to the Olympics in 2016?

Posted on November 21, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

Last week a delegation from the International Baseball Federation arrived in Lausanne, Switzerland, to present its case for returning the sport of baseball to the Olympic program.  Members of the delegation included IBAF president and longtime sports executive Harvey Schiller and current Detroit Tiger Curtis Granderson.

(Brief digression:  I am duty-bound to note that Harvey Schiller is a 1960 graduate of The Citadel.)

For those unaware, the Beijing games marked the end of baseball and softball as Olympic sports, due to a vote held by the International Olympic Committee in 2005.  They became the first two sports tossed out of the Olympics since 1936, when polo was eliminated.  As to why they were given the heave-ho, there wasn’t really an official reason (at least, not a legitimate one), but the actual reasons were:

1)  For baseball, the IOC was annoyed that MLB wouldn’t stop its season and let its best players compete in the Games.  The honchos that run the Olympics are big on the Games being the #1 goal/event for all sports (with the notable exception of soccer).  That clearly wasn’t the case for baseball (and that is still the case, obviously).

2)  There was also some grumbling about drugs, but that was probably a side issue.  Dick Pound would claim otherwise, but then, he probably thinks baseball is played by savages.

3)  Softball’s problem was that it was perceived as being dominated by Americans, and why give the U.S. an easy gold medal?  “Gimme” golds are reserved for select Euro countries and China.  (There was talk that the modern pentathlon might go, too, but since U.S. athletes have generally not fared well in that event, it was probably never in serious danger of being excised from the Games.)  Of course, the gold medal in softball in Beijing was actually won by the Japanese, which I guess qualifies as irony.

There are two slots open for the 2016 Games, and baseball and softball are competing with several other sports, including rugby, golf, squash, and roller sports (which apparently would not include roller hockey or skateboarding; not including roller hockey would be a dealbreaker for me if I had a vote).

I don’t think baseball is getting back in the Olympics until MLB suspends its season to let its stars participate, and that’s never going to happen.  What is particularly irksome is that soccer, another sport that doesn’t send most of its best players to the Olympics, is allowed to remain in the Games, as essentially an under-23 tournament (with three spots reserved for “overage” players).  I think baseball would be best served by a similar policy.  However, the IOC isn’t going to go for that.  I’m not sure the IBAF is interested in that idea, either.

It’s too bad, really.  I do think softball has a chance to be reinstated, now that the IOC has seen that the U.S. isn’t a mortal lock for the gold every time out.

I’ll close by noting that another sport is trying to bust into the Olympics in 2012.  It may not have a shot to make it to the London games, but perhaps 2016 isn’t out of reach.  I’m talking, of course, about Pole Dancing.

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Avoiding trombone music

Posted on November 21, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

The Citadel is playing Florida this week.  In football.  This could be a tough game.  My understanding is that the Gators are pretty good.  This Tebow guy, he’s received some press.

The worst loss in football for The Citadel occurred in 1958, when Georgia and quarterback Fran Tarkenton defeated the Bulldogs in Athens, 76-0.  After the last touchdown, the UGA band played “76 Trombones” from The Music Man.  I am hoping that on Saturday, Florida’s band doesn’t have a reason to start playing Nena’s biggest hit…

Also to be avoided:  possible references to country music singer Larry Gatlin (who scored a touchdown in Houston’s 100-6 victory over Tulsa in 1968), Neil Lomax (quarterback for Portland State the night the Vikings beat Delaware State 105-0), and Cumberland College (222-0 ring a bell?).

Ideally, The Citadel will score, not suffer any catastrophic injuries, and keep the game within 50 (which would better South Carolina’s effort from last week).  I would settle for holding the Gators under 70 points, though, to be perfectly honest.

There is no reason to preview Florida, because everyone already knows everything that is necessary to know about the Gators.  Tim Tebow can cure cancer, Percy Harvin is faster than Mercury, and Urban Meyer is an outstanding coach, if seemingly a bit humorless, possibly because his parents named him Urban.

There is this guy named “Mr. Two-Bits” who does some little number that all the Gator fans like.  He’s been doing it for 60 years, and he’s doing it for the last time at this game.  He actually went to The Citadel for a couple of years, but he’s going to be all-out rooting for Florida anyway, so you will excuse me if I don’t lionize him.

In the event Florida’s team oversleeps en masse and forfeits the game to The Citadel, it would be the first victory for the Bulldogs over an SEC team since that famous (or infamous, if you’re into pig calls) 10-3 victory over Arkansas in 1992.  Jack Crowe, of course, was fired after that game as head coach of the Razorbacks.  It’s not every day a coach is fired after the season opener.

I will say this:  the players and coaches for The Citadel will take this game very seriously, and won’t like some of the snide remarks that have been made about it.  I doubt my saying that I hope the game stays within 70 would go over well with some of them, either.  They are headed to Gainesville to compete, and measure themselves against some of the best players in the country.  I just don’t want them to get embarrassed, but they obviously can’t and won’t think that way – and that’s a good thing.

One final thing…I’m not a huge fan of every article about The Citadel, even ones that are positive, but I thought this article by David Jones was excellent, so if you haven’t read it already, you might give it a look.

(Kenny, I flinch too.)

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Bulldog hoopsters unable to maintain lead over mighty Big 10 opponent

Posted on November 21, 2008 by Sandlapper Spike

The lead was 4-2.  Iowa eventually survived, 70-48.

For The Citadel, the first six possessions went like this:
1) Inside to Demetrius Nelson, he scores
2) Inside to Nelson, he scores again
3) Attempt to transition for an easy hoop leads to challenged layup, no good
4) Ignored the inside, rushed a 3, no good
5) Ignored the inside, one-on-one move leading to long jumper, no good
6) Inside to Nelson, Iowa brings help this time, he kicks it out for an open 3, Daniel Eykyn makes it

Then there was a media timeout.  When action resumed, Nelson had been substituted.

When you are playing a team like Iowa, there aren’t going to be a lot of possessions (the Bulldogs had 54 in this game).  You’ve got to make them count.  If something is working early, like Nelson getting good looks because he’s being played one-on-one by a guy about his size, keep doing it.  Instead The Citadel started rushing things. 

Iowa would pass the ball around, running ball screen after ball screen, waiting for a defender to screw up (which happened way too often).  Then one of the Hawkeyes would take (and 52% of the time, make) an open 3.  It was quite frustrating to watch.  Even more frustrating, though, would be The Citadel’s response, which was seemingly to try to speed the game up by taking quick shots on the offensive end, especially three-pointers, missing most of the outside jumpers (4-17 from 3).  The Citadel’s rushed play also led to 13 turnovers, which doesn’t sound bad, but remember, there were only 54 possessions.  That means that almost one-fourth of every Bulldog possession ended in a turnover.  That’s not a good ratio.

The Citadel also tried to speed the game up by pressing Iowa, but that didn’t work, partly because the Bulldogs aren’t really a pressing team.  Iowa only committed one turnover in the entire first half (five for the game). 

A victory probably wasn’t meant to be for The Citadel, anyway, considering Iowa was fairly sharp and never seemed sluggish, and also given how well Hawkeye guard Anthony Tucker shot the ball (the second three Tucker made was actually very well defended, but Tucker made it anyway). 

Still, the final result is disappointing.  While Iowa is a major conference team, it’s not expected to challenge for the Big 10 title, and perhaps more importantly, the game didn’t feature multiple athletic mismatches like you might expect against a BCS opponent.  In other words, it shouldn’t have been a 22-point loss (which is a bad loss, especially given the pace of play).  The Citadel did manage to get within five points with less than 13 minutes left in the second half, but then Iowa made another run and the Bulldogs seemed to lose their bearings.

Cameron Wells had a good game, finishing with 21 points on 13 shots.  Austin Dahn seemed to pick up a foul every five seconds he was in the game – it just wasn’t his night.  Nelson finished with eight shot attempts (and only one FT attempt) in 28 minutes.  Cosmo Morabbi grabbed six rebounds, not bad at all for a guard, and had three assists.  He was 0-5 from the field, though, missing three three-point shots, at least two of which seemed to not come in the natural flow of the offense.

Of course, there arguably wasn’t a natural flow to the offense.  The Citadel only had five assists in this game on nineteen made field goals, and that despite only picking up two offensive rebounds, so it’s not like the Bulldogs converted a bunch of tap-ins.

Next up, Cincinnati Christian, as part of the Cancun Challenge, with McAlister Field House the site, as opposed to a Mexican beach…

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