Olympic snub annoys U.S. softball team

After Beijing Games, sport will be dropped for 2012

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, FLA. -- When the black charter bus with its tinted windows finally turned into the parking lot, the young girls wearing replica jerseys with "Finch," "Fernandez" and "Osterman" on their backs screamed with delight and scrambled for a closer look.

Their moms and dads did the same, only much quieter.

You'd think Hannah Montana was on board.

Nope, just some softball players. But not ordinary ones. The best on the planet.

And as the U.S. women's national team stepped off the bus and the players began gathering their equipment bags more than two hours before an exhibition game against Central Florida, they were cheered like rock stars.

"Everywhere we go, everyone loves us," shortstop Natasha Watley said. "It's not like when we get to the Olympics and everyone hates us."

Six months before packing up bats and gloves to depart for China, the three-time defending gold medalists are zigzagging the country on a 62-game tour covering more than 37,000 miles to prepare for the Beijing Games and spread the gospel of softball.

And, for some, to say goodbye.

Just shy of its fourth Olympic appearance, softball, which was introduced along with women's soccer at the 1996 Atlanta Games, will be taking its final swing for a while.

Three years ago, the International Olympic Committee voted softball and baseball off the program for London's 2012 Games, a stunning decision that blindsided the American team, which was coming off its record-smashing run through the 2004 tournament in Athens. The IOC will vote in October 2009 whether to bring softball back.

Since softball's debut, the U.S. has won all three Olympic golds.

"It was devastating," said Lisa Fernandez, a three-time gold medalist widely considered the game's greatest player. "I'm not even sure that's a strong enough word to describe how I felt. You think you're golden, you feel like you're at the top of the game, and all of a sudden it all gets taken away with no warning and really with no explanation."

Softball has enjoyed unprecedented growth at all levels in the past decade and could be reinstated for the 2016 Games, although that's not guaranteed. What annoys many players on the roster is that IOC members, who voted 52-52 with one abstention in 2005, seemed to pair softball with baseball, whose steroid problem is threatening to unravel the national pastime.

"What broke my heart more than anything was the fact that the reasoning they gave for kicking us out was because they lumped us with baseball, a sport with steroid abuse that doesn't even send its best athletes," U.S. outfielder Jessica Mendoza said. "You're going to kick out a sport that you know nothing about?

"Bring them out to some of our games. Bring them out on tour. We aren't what you see with the MLB guys on TV."

The U.S. team's pre-Olympic tour four years ago was called "Aiming For Athens." This one, which will run through July 26, has been dubbed "Bound 4 Beijing." Some have joked that the next one should be named "Left Out Of London."

None of the players, though, finds the situation remotely funny. These are committed women who grew up dreaming of one day playing in the Olympics, of being the best of the best. They've achieved their goals, but what happens to the next generation of talented youngsters who won't know the feeling of taking the field in an Olympic venue or wearing a USA uniform?

That's why this tour is as vital for softball's present as it is the future. Without the Olympic platform, the game's only major exposure will come in events like the Pan American Games and world championships. While those are major competitions, they aren't the Olympics.

"It's a shame," said Watley, a second-time Olympian and volunteer coach at UCLA, her alma mater. "The sport is probably going to take a step back, and I feel bad for the younger girls. The Olympics are the top tier. There won't be the same kind of role models for girls to look up to."