A mission from the Chinese Taipei Amateur Baseball Association (CTBA) took part in an emergency meeting in Switzerland in an attempt to save baseball from being axed as an Olympic sport.
CTBA Chairman Tom C.H. Peng, who took part in the two-day emergency meeting called by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF) Friday and Saturday in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux, expressed the universal concerns of all IBAF member countries that once baseball is dropped from the Olympic summer games as suggested by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), a terrible blow will have been dealt to the development of baseball around the world.
Peng, a vice chairman of the Asian chapter of the IBAF, said baseball is already the "national sport" of Taiwan with millions of people involved in it. The CTBA will try its utmost to cooperate with other IBAF member countries to avoid the exclusion of baseball from the summer games.
The IOC proposed recently to drop baseball, along with softball and the modern pentathlon, from the summer Olympics.
The IOC Program Commission put forth a report late last month, proposing the removal of the three sports and several other events in other sports, beginning from the 2008 Beijing Games.
The report cited as reasons the fact that the world's top baseball players were absent from Olympic competition and that baseball's popularity is restricted to certain continents. It also noted the high venue construction costs.
IBAF member countries will try all possible means to fight the IOC plans to drop baseball from the Olympic summer games, Peng quoted the meeting participants as saying.
IBAF President Aldo Notari said that he is optimistic that baseball will be retained in the 2008 Beijing Games.
In a statement released after the conclusion of the Montreux emergency meeting, Notari said that he is happy to verify that the strengths most important in baseball around the world -- the professional leagues of the US and Japan, the Players Association in the US, the US Olympic Committee and the IBAF -- are completely united to work together in a positive way to explain to IOC President Jacques Rogge and the members of the IOC Executive Board why baseball must be a part of the Olympic program and remove any doubts that have recently risen.
All key individuals, including USOC President Marty Mankamy-er, all members of the IBAF Executive Board and officials from professional major leagues of the US and Japan, participated in the emergency meeting, reflecting the seriousness of the possible implications of the IOC proposal.
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