Hard blow against softball

The short and, frankly, undistinguished history of women’s softball as an Olympic sport ended on Thursday night with an unexpected bang. In one of the most stunning results of the entire Beijing extravaganza, the US lost the final and the gold medal to Japan.

The US had taken the three previous golds since softball was brought into the programme in 1996. They were also on a streak of 22 consecutive wins. No one expected this and, of all the silver medals handed out at the games, none have been received so despondently. These were not the usual podium tears. But the Americans can have no complaints: they were out-batted and, above all, out-fielded, and went down decisively, 3-1.

Yet, paradoxically, this result was good news for them in their campaign to get softball – booted out with baseball for 2012 – back into the Olympics for 2016. Here at last is the first shred of evidence that this sport is not a total US monopoly. See! We’re not really the lone superpower. Can we come back now, please?

Well, I for one hope not. One of the regular late night bar-room topics here is how to bring this monster of an event down to manageable size. There is a very strong case for evicting all sports where the Olympics do not resemble the pinnacle of excellence (which gets rid of tennis and football as well as baseball).

You could also throw out all the other team games (hockey, handball, basketball etc), anything reliant on horses (equestrianism, modern pentathlon) and anything decided primarily by judges’ opinions (gymnastics, diving) or interpretations (boxing, fencing). Plus all those that are irredeemably corrupt. The 2012 Olympics would thus comprise an opening ceremony, following swiftly by a closing one. It would save billions. We could keep the beach volleyball, if only to secure the TV rights.

Even taking a more moderate view, these expulsions represent one small but necessary step towards curing Olympic gigantism. In theory, 28 sports here will fall to 26 in London. In practice, it is only one step because, in the Olympics, softball is played as the female equivalent of baseball.

The drop was also a fluke because squash and karate were very nearly voted in instead. But this is still a revolutionary development: no sport had been kicked out since polo, last played in 1936. The case against softball is primarily its weak geographical spread. But it is not just that.

The final was great, reaching a climax in the sixth inning when the US loaded the bases before pitcher Yukiko Ueno got out of trouble. And there was a full house, for once, filled with enough genuine chanting partisans to build an atmosphere. But it was the atmosphere of a college game, not an Olympic final.

Softball (once known as mushball or kittenball) is a delightful cut-down version of baseball, highly suited to beery mixed groups in the park. You think baseball is glorified rounders? Softball isn’t even all that glorified. Even here, the home-run fence is half the distance of that in a major league ballpark and the standard of athleticism looked, shall we say, patchy.

Women have come a long way in the Olympics since the days (not an eon ago, just the 1950s) when track distances beyond 200 metres were considered too much for delicate constitutions. Every day for the past fortnight the world has watched awestruck as they have produced stunning feats of athleticism and endurance. Softball does not belong here.