Baseball plans to seek reinstatement
(AP)
Updated: 2005-10-08 10:22

"The result was very close in both cases, with a difference of only one or two votes," Notari said in a telephone interview from Italy. "I think we and softball deserve another chance."

Notari and softball federation president Don Porter met separately this week with IOC president Jacques Rogge in Lausanne, Switzerland, to discuss the procedure for possible readmittance.

Under IOC rules, at least one-third of the 115 members would need to submit a motion to consider a new vote. Then, half the membership would need to vote in favor of the motion. If that passed, the sports would require a majority in favor to win reinstatement.

"We will do all we can," Notari said. "For us, being an Olympic sport is very, very important. Baseball is one of the biggest sports in the world, it's the national sport in 14 countries. What other sport can say that, apart from soccer?"

Baseball has been in the Olympics since the 1992 Barcelona Games. Softball, a women's only sport, made its Olympic debut in Atlanta in 1996.

IOC members cited Major League Baseball's unwillingness to let its players take part in the Olympics and the sport's doping problems as major reasons for the decision to remove it from the games.

"The best athletes are not competing and the major athletes perform in an environment where doping controls are not what we have in the Olympic world," Rogge said after the Singapore vote.