Baseball to add women in bid to be reinstated

April 7, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) — 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.

The president of the International Baseball Federation, Harvey Schiller, 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 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 decide in October.

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 news of the expanded bid “wonderful.” Glennie recruits women for the U.S. national team, which competes in the Women’s World Cup of Baseball.

Glennie, an assistant attorney general in Michigan, 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. Some girls have been able to land roster spots on boys high school baseball teams, but those are rare, he said.

“It’s been that way — baseball for the boys, softball for the girls,” said Glennie, who got involved in women’s baseball in 1992, when his daughter wanted to play the sport.

The president of the International Softball Federation, Don Porter, said he was surprised.

“I didn’t think many women were playing baseball,” said Porter, whose group has given the IOC the option of adding men’s softball to the sport.