Ben Sheets (28) and the United States won gold at Sydney in 2000, but failed to qualify for the 2004 Games in Athens. John Biever/SI
	RELATED • IOC votes to drop baseball, softball in 2012 • Latin America livid with United States

SINGAPORE -- After the International Olympic Committee decided, by an unspecified majority vote of its 115 members on Friday, to drop baseball and softball from the Olympic program in 2012, theories as to why ran the gamut.

Among them: Both sports are native to the United States and their rejection was a slap at a U.S. Olympic movement that has not made a sufficient attempt to engage international entities, including IOC members from abroad; the expulsions were an outgrowth of the recent anti-U.S. sentiment that runs beyond the boundaries of sports; the 2012 Games will be held in London, where neither sport enjoys a following; softball was linked with baseball and the consequences for baseball were inevitable given Major League Baseball's indifferent attitude toward Olympic participation and staunch refusal to form a credible anti-doping policy.

In fact, the nay votes, which constituted a majority of those cast on Friday morning, probably represented a combination of those reasons.

Outside the meeting hall at the Raffles Plaza in Singapore, Anita DeFrantz, a longtime U.S. representative of the IOC, seemed shocked. "It is so difficult for me to believe 50 percent of my colleagues would vote to remove a women's sport from the program," she told reporters. Away from the microphones, DeFrantz strolled over to Bob Ctvrtlik, a fellow U.S. delegate to the IOC, and said, "They did it to the U.S."

Thomas Bach, an influential German IOC member, disagreed. "I would 100 percent exclude this anti-American interpretation," he said. "The federation did not succeed in bringing the best players to the Games in Athens. However, I am quite surprised at the result."

Don Porter, the American head of the international softball federation, said he did not expect his sport to get the ax. "Absolutely not," Porter said. "I thought, based on my discussions here with IOC members over the last five days, that we had good support. I'm very surprised. We've been good for the Olympic program, but sometimes the game of politics enters into it."

The exclusion is not necessarily permanent. Baseball and softball will still be played at the Beijing Games in 2008, and both sports will be eligible to reapply for consideration in time for the 2016 Olympics. After he announced the two expulsions, IOC president Jacques Rogge made a plea to the disappointed parties to get their houses in order. "I would like to invite the leaders of these sports that will not be included in the program to make their very best efforts during the coming years so as to be able to convince the session that they deserve to come back to the Olympic Games in 2016," he said "We shall support them in their efforts."

But baseball, in particular, will need to work to earn its colors. It always has been a minor sport since it was added as a medal sport in 1992 to the Olympic program, three steps behind the likes of rowing and volleyball. Both MLB and its players union will need to interrupt the major-league season in order to allow the top players to participate, creating dream teams to rival those in hockey and basketball.

Members of these constituencies have said that they would only consider breaking the season briefly, allowing players to participate in three or four games at most. But that would either entail starting an eight-team tournament with quarterfinal games, using a tiebreaker of run differential in a shortened round-robin or allowing one group of minor-league or college players to participate in a qualifying round before major leaguers take over in the medal-round games. The last option will not happen because the IOC is trying to keep the overall number of athletes to 10,500 for the Games.

"Do you think the IOC will make this concession for baseball?" asks Craig Reedie, a British IOC member. "They are ill-positioned to ask for concessions." If baseball doesn't make a commitment to break its season for two weeks and have major leaguers there for the full tournament, the IOC probably will not care enough to bring it back.

Additionally, baseball commissioner Bud Selig and players union chief Donald Fehr may feel they have broken new ground in increasing suspension lengths and testing frequency. But that policy is seen largely as cosmetic and laughable within Olympic ranks, given the relative rules and punishments developed by the World Anti-Doping Agency and followed by athletes in other sports who face frequent unannounced random tests and are subject to two-year bans for first offenses.

"A lot of members were fed up with the attitude of Major League Baseball," says Dick Pound, a veteran IOC member from Canada and the head of WADA. "That wasn't so of softball, but unfortunately, I think many members linked them together. With the baseball people, frankly, I think the members felt if it doesn't mean enough to you to want to come to the Games and if it doesn't mean enough to develop an honest doping policy, then don't come."