Olympics 2012: Baseball & Softball Axed

So what will Jenny Finch do with her life now? It's a question for the ages. There are 28 sports in the Olympic lineup and 15 of them are complete bollocks. When I heard that the Olympic committee was planning to give a couple sports the boot, I was naive enough to believe they'd finally drop table tennis - an activity primarily played by two groups: the Chinese and stoners. I've watched some of that craziness on ESPN and have come to the conclusion that players are under orders to make things overly complicated with big strokes and spins that force opponents to return shots while standing 10+ feet away from the table. Drop shot, anyone? Of course not. Then people might realize that Olympic table tennis is fucking ridiculous and the Chinese will have to rely solely on gymnastics and badminton for gold medals. One day people will realize that table tennis is as absurd as something like power walking, both being activities where insane histrionics hide the fact that you're a patsy and that the only one who knows you're doing legitimate cardiovascular exercise is you.

But back to the issue at hand. I can't say I'm all that surprised. The Olympics are about one thing nowadays: making money, and even though Tommy Lasorda disagrees, baseball and softball simply aren't a draw unless the games are in the States. Softball boasts (maybe) 5 countries with teams worth a damn and baseball is a niche sport (Americas & East Asia) that is internationally inferior to cricket and doesn't showcase the world's best. Soon enough, we'll have 2 new sports, one of which could be rugby. In my SportsbyBrooks update 3 or 4 weeks ago, I brought up the following:

Captains of the world's top 16 rugby sevens teams sent a letter of protest to IOC president Jacques Rogge after Olympic official, Denis Oswald, called the sport "something of a joke."

I couldn't agree more. Rugby Sevens? What a bunch of chumps. Rugby has nothing on fascinating institutions of sport like rhythmic gymnastics, trampoline, badminton, table tennis, and dressage. Rugby Sevens... the nerve.

If the committee is voting out baseball, the least it can do is bring an incarnation of rugby into the fold. Apart from the fact that I owe my life to the game, I've always fancied it as one of the best sports in the world. "But what about football?" Begin heresy: I love football but I'm in love with rugby. I think it's fair to say that most of you view rugby as glorified option football wholly unworthy of our attention. Not surprising since your exposure is limited to the time you watched Fox Sports World at 4 am and the random experience with your university's crappy club team. But the game of rugby is one of both precision and brute force, where speed and split-second timing are as vital as strength and power. There are no pads and there are no helmets. You won't find 350-pound flabbies sucking wind in vain and you won't see others sitting out because the wind got knocked out of them. There is no getting tired, there are no timeouts, and if you must leave the pitch, you are not welcome to return. And in what other sport must players tape down their ears to prevent them from getting ripped off? Certainly not football. As far as team sports go, rugby is the supreme test of strength, endurance, agility, and determination, wrapped neatly in a package of glorious, organized mayhem. It more than deserves to be introduced in the Olympics but knowing the ship of fools that is the IOC, we'll probably be welcoming roller sports instead. If roller sports get in, it'd better damn well be Roller Derby. Nothing less will do.

It's time for Jacques Rogge to kick his "teammates" to the curb and do the following:

• Out: Badminton, Shooting, Sailing, Equestrian, Synchronized Swimming, Tennis, Table Tennis, Rhythmic Gymnastics, and any Cycling that is not in a velodrome
• Can be Modified: Archery - opponents can shoot at each other or at moving targets with flaming arrows; and Canoe/kayak - only if sharks are involved.