by LesMisJim » Mon Aug 22, 2016 12:45 am
Recently I saw that baseball may be added back to the Olympic program.
My thoughts ..... balls
There is already one major team sport from the USA in the Olympics in basketball. Furthermore, baseball may not even bring in the MLB players.
Rather than baseball, why would the Olympics not bring in cricket? This sport easily covers as many competitive interested countries as baseball. Afterall, ask Usain Bolt what he would do if not sprinting, and his answer is that he would be a soccer player, or a cricketer. This sport would give far more to the Olympics by bringing in the otherwise uninterested Indian audience, as well as Pakistan, Bhangladesh, Sri Lanka, and then East Africa, the English speaking Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britian. Keep in mind in many of our lifetimes Pakistan will have a larger population than the United States.
Also I saw karate would be added to the program in Japan as well. Another mistake, karate is a combo of tae wwon do, and boxing in that it has both punches and kicks emphasized. Why not bring in the ancient sport of pankration (one in which Hercules was purported to have competed in and won), or combat sambo (formed in WWI, basically same thing as pankration but competitors were different gear)? Pankration is more or less amateur mixed martial arts, and would link the Olympics back to it's roots, also bolstering interest from various parts of the world including the US, Russia, Ukraine, Britian, France, Japan, and Brazil.
Just some thoughts about improving the Olympics as a GLOBAL event.