Baseball's next bid to add women

WASHINGTON --- Baseball will be adding a women's component to its bid to get reinstated for the 2016 Olympics, after failing to unite with women's softball.

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Associated Press

Harvey Schiller: International Baseball Federation president is planning to add women's baseball to the sport's Olympic bid.

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Harvey Schiller, the president of the International Baseball Federation, told The Associated Press the change will be made in the next few days.

"The main reason is the growth of the game, and obviously, we have a constituency which makes up women's baseball, and they're asking, 'What about us?'" Schiller said in a telephone interview Monday. "We want the world to know that we have women's baseball."

The move comes a few weeks after women's softball rejected baseball's proposal for a joint baseball-softball bid. The two sports are among seven competing for two openings for new sports at the 2016 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee will vote in October on which sports to add to the Summer Games in London.

Schiller estimated that between 300,000 and 500,000 women and girls play baseball worldwide, a figure which includes Little League and T-ball.

Jim Glennie, president of the American Women's Baseball Federation, called the news "wonderful." Glennie recruits women for the U.S. National Team, which competes in the Women's World Cup of Baseball.

Glennie said he didn't know of any high schools in the U.S. that offer women's baseball, and that girls who want to play baseball beyond Little League face an uphill battle.

"It's been that way -- baseball for the boys, softball for the girls," Glennie said.

Meanwhile, softball has given the Olympic committee the option of adding men's softball to the sport.

The president of the International Softball Federation, Don Porter, said Monday he was surprised by baseball's move to include women.

"I didn't think many women were playing baseball," he said. "That's fine, if they want to involve females. All sports should do that."

Porter said he wasn't concerned that it would hurt softball's bid.

"We know we've got a strong female program," he said.