No Olympics for you!

To no one's surprise, baseball and software were rejected by the International Olympic Committee the other day:

Softball and baseball had been seeking a return after being voted off the program four years ago for the 2012 London Games. Attempted reinstatements were rejected by the IOC in 2006. International Softball Federation president Don Porter said he would continue his fight to get his sport back into the Olympics, though International Baseball Federation president Harvey Schiller said he saw no point of mounting another Olympic bid for his sport.

That's a good move for baseball. There's no point in having it as an Olympic sport because we (a) already see the greatest players in the world on a daily basis and (b) we already have the World Baseball Classic.

To me, the Olympics are about seeing athletes and sports that I never get to see otherwise. I care almost nothing about swimming, track and field, team handball, skiing, speed skating, etc. during off years. The Olympics are my one chance to care. I would like to see tennis and soccer and other familiar sports eliminated from the Olympics too, especially because many of those sports already have international competitions.

And don't get me started on sports that hinge on capricious judges (gymnastics, diving, etc.) rather than timers and scorekeepers.

Non-baseball post: Olympic swimming

Here's the question I have every four years during the Olympics: Why are there so many swimming medals? Michael Phelps is going for 8 gold medals, which is great for him, but why does he get that opportunity when a sprinter or cyclist or boxer or beach volleyball player only gets one or two shots?

I understand the distances. 50M, 100M, 200M, 400M, 1500M that all makes sense. I understand the relays. But why all the different strokes? Why the medleys?

In track, you have sprints and hurdles. But you don't have the gunny sack race. You don't have the crab walk. You don't have a relay when one person hops on his left leg, and the next guy hops on his right leg, and the last guy hops on two legs.

Yet in swimming you have freestyle (which makes perfect sense... it's the fastest stroke), and you have breaststroke, and butterfly, and backstroke. And then just for fun, you have the medley, when one person does each stroke. That makes no sense to me.