With the Summer Games coming to Los Angeles in 2028, some of baseball's biggest stars are selling the idea of MLB making its players eligible to compete for gold on sports' biggest stage.
As Bryce Harper considered his options in free agency in 2018, he knew he wanted to be in a place that felt like home. He knew he wanted to win. He knew he wanted a deal that he felt reflected his value. And he wanted to be allowed to play in the Olympics.
“I’d like to play in the Olympics,” says Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani, the game’s brightest star and one of the most famous people in his native Japan, through interpreter Will Ireton. “Also, knowing the fact that there will be non-baseball fans watching the games as well, I think it would be really good for the baseball industry.”
At first, it seemed likely that this Olympic cycle would look the same as all the others, and in Tokyo, it did. But there is a growing push to make room for major leaguers in L.A., thanks in part to extensive lobbying by Casey Wasserman, CEO of his namesake sports agency and the chair of the LA2028 board.
“Putting the nation’s colors on your chest, there’s nothing like it,” Harper says. “There’s no greater feeling than going into another country and winning and hearing your anthem blast. So I’m hoping we can get something done. Obviously it’s tough logistically, but it would be a lot of fun to be able to get baseball there and have the best players there doing it to represent their countries.”
American Red Sox center fielder Jarren Duran was in the minors during the qualifying rounds before the Tokyo Olympics and played in those games; he was called up to the majors just in time to become ineligible to make the Olympic team. As he celebrated his major league debut, he wondered if the team couldn’t have called him up a month later and let him earn the rings tattoo he was planning for his right biceps. “It was bittersweet,” he says.
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