Why no USA Baseball team in the Olympics?

General Questions
#1

Title basically asks the question. Isn’t it un-American for us to not represent our national pasttime in the Olympics?

My guess is that there’s only so many slots open for the tournament in Athens, and our boys didn’t make it.

And if that’s the case…why didn’t we make it? Are our minor leaguers not good enough to beat other national teams anymore?

#2

it’s probably because the olympics falls right in the middle of baseball season and US teams can’t afford to have their best players miss two weeks worth of games…

…either that or no one in the US knew that baseball was an olympic sport so no one thought to send a team

#3

There are regional qualifying tournaments for baseball, long before the Olympics begin. The American team, which was represented by minor leaguers, lost to the Mexican national team in that qualifying round.

#4

yeah, what he said! here’s the link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/low/olympics_2004/baseball/3810329.stm

#5

As I remember the situation (and I’m sure someone will be along to clarify and or correct any innacuracies), there were a limited number of slots from each global region. I believe the Americas had two slots. There was to be a round-robin series of games, with the top 4 advancing to a single-elimination tournament.

For some reason, several teams from the Americas dropped out (including the Dominican Republic! I’d sure like to hear the story about why they dropped out), leaving just 4 or 5 teams left. The US went undefeated in the round-robin, while Mexico lost all their games, save a single forfeit. The US was then matched up against Mexico in the final 4, and lost (I think 2-1). And that was that.

Baseball, more than any other sport, I think, can have a major underdog beat a favorite in any single game. That’s what happened here. It would be nice to have a best-of series to determine the final slots, but those were the rules in place at the time.

#6

Thanks for the speedy replies, folks.

It’s nice to be able to be in conversation with my friend, come up with a question, post to the SDMB and be able to continue the conversation (with the answer to the original question) without missing a beat :slight_smile: