USA Baseball
The United States Baseball Federation, doing business as USA Baseball, is a 501 nonprofit organization that acts as the national governing body for baseball in the United States. USA Baseball is a member of the United States Olympic Committee and the World Baseball Softball Confederation. The organization is responsible for the selection of the United States national team for various international competition, including the senior professional team, the collegiate national team, the various youth national teams, and the women's national team.
Tracing its origins to the formation of the U.S. Amateur Baseball Federation by Leslie Mann in 1932, the modern USA Baseball organization was sanctioned in 1978. Although USA Baseball does not have jurisdiction over Major League Baseball or its affiliates, it is the chief organizer of non-collegiate amateur baseball initiatives through its Sport Development department, including Play Ball and Pitch Smart. USA Baseball also presents the Golden Spikes Award annually to the top amateur baseball player in the country and is responsible for creating the USABat standard.
Since 1997, no player has used uniform number 42 out of respect for Jackie Robinson, which was the same year the number was retired across Major League Baseball.
History
Predecessor organizations
The first ever US national baseball team took the field in the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, France, in an unofficial capacity, with the same composition in the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, which constituted the first time the game had been presented to the Games' American audiences. In 1912, yet another demonstration event occurred in the Summer Olympics in Stockholm. Only one player on the roster, Jim Thorpe, had extensive experience in the two demonstration games that were held, as the majority of players were track and field athletes.The national governing body is a de facto successor to the USA Baseball Congress, founded in 1931 by former major league outfielder Leslie Mann, who is also regarded in high esteem as founder of the International Baseball Federation. That organization helped formalize the establishment of a full time national team program and establish amateur baseball nationally. Under Leslie's guidance, the nascent Team USA, following a 20-game friendship tour of Japan in 1935 took part in the demonstration match at the Summer Olympics in Berlin the next year and participated in the very first Amateur World Series two years later, only to lose out to England. They took part in a further two more AWS tournaments before the Second World War.
After 1942, Mann's USA Baseball Congress became inactive. American representation in international competition was eventually taken up by collegiate athletic groups took part, with an all-NCAA team of college athletes taking part in the Pan American Games since the first edition held in 1951. This would be the basis of the current USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, which would go on to play an exhibition game at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Japan. Before that, the only all-military team the country fielded in the Summer Olympic Games was in the demonstration game in Melbourne in 1956, with the US Far East Command providing the athletes that competed.
Several amateur baseball groups coalesced to form the United States Baseball Federation in early 1962, with Everett D. Barnes of the American Association of College Baseball Coaches as its president. This version of the USBF initially existed as an affiliate of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. During this time, the group was not sanctioned by the U.S. Olympic Committee, and it clashed with the Amateur Athletic Union for the right to organize national baseball teams and participate in International Baseball Federation competitions; these tensions came to a head during the selection process for the 1964 Summer Olympic team.
After the 1964 Olympics, the modern incarnation of the USBF was officially incorporated in Michigan on January 6, 1965. However, at this point, it was still operating without official sanction.
USA Baseball
USA Baseball in its modern form was established as a result of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which officially recognized the United States Olympic Committee and allowed it to sanction international amateur sport, including baseball. As the USA received hosting rights for the 1984 Summer Olympics with Los Angeles as the host, the time would come for the birth of a new group to spearhead baseball efforts in the country. USA Baseball was originally based in Trenton, New Jersey upon its establishment on the basis of the old USBF in Michigan.The US Baseball Federation then moved to Tucson, Arizona in November 1997 with its facilities being headquartered at Hi Corbett Field and would slowly adopt the brand USA Baseball as its official identity, one it carries to the present. It would spend five years in Tucson before moving to its current home in Cary, North Carolina in 2003.
14U and 16U national teams
From 1997 to 2011, USA Baseball fielded a 16U national team that participated in the International Baseball Federation World Youth Championships, as well as other tournaments, including the COPABE Pan American Youth Championships and the 1999 PAL World Series.In its 15-year history, the USA Baseball 16U national team experienced unparalleled success on the international stage. Team USA made it to the championship game of every international tournament it appeared in, taking home 11 gold medals – including nine in World Championships – and three silvers. In addition, eight of those teams went undefeated in international play. The program holds an overall historical record of 99–10 against international opponents, including going 54–2 in world championships.
The 14U national team was created in 2007 and fielded teams for the COPABE Pan American Championships and Pan American Championships Qualifiers until 2011. In that time, the program went undefeated five times in six international tournaments, earning five gold medals and one bronze in its history and finishing with a 39–2 overall record.
In 2011, the two teams were discontinued after the World Baseball Softball Confederation changed its youth championships age discipline to 15U. The programs were replaced with the 15U national team and the 14U national team development program.
USA Baseball in the Olympic Games
Baseball was first introduced to the Olympic Games as an exhibition sport at the Los Angeles 1984 Games and returned as a demonstration sport in the Seoul 1988 Games. In 1984, the United States came in second, losing to Japan in the final, 6–3. Four years later, though, Team USA got Olympic redemption as it won the gold medal over Japan with a 5–3 victory.Baseball was open only to male amateurs in 1992 and 1996. As a result, the Americans and other nations where professional baseball is developed relied on collegiate players, while Cubans used their most experienced veterans, who technically were considered amateurs as they nominally held other jobs, but in fact trained full-time. In 2000, pros were admitted, but Major League Baseball refused to release its players in 2000, 2004, and 2008, and the situation changed only a little: the Cubans still used their best players, while the Americans started using minor leaguers. The IOC cited the absence of the best players as the main reason for baseball being dropped from the Olympic program.
In contrast, Nippon Professional Baseball has allowed its players to compete in the Olympics, and paused its 2021 season for the duration of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
At the IOC meeting on July 7, 2005, baseball and softball were voted out of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom, becoming the first sports voted out of the Olympics since polo was eliminated from the 1936 Olympics. The elimination excised 16 teams and more than 300 athletes from the 2012 Olympics. The two slots left available by the IOC's elimination were subsequently filled by golf and rugby sevens in 2016. This decision was reaffirmed on February 9, 2006.
In the stands during the 2008 bronze medal game between the U.S. and Japan, IOC head Jacques Rogge was interviewed by MLB.com's Mark Newman and cited various criteria for baseball to earn its way back in: "To be on the Olympic program is an issue where you need universality as much as possible. You need to have a sport with a following, you need to have the best players and you need to be in strict compliance with WADA. And these are the qualifications that have to be met. When you have all that, you have to win hearts. You can win the mind, but you still must win hearts."
It was officially decided in August 2009 at the IOC Board meeting in Berlin that baseball would also not be included in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
On April 1, 2011, the IBAF and the International Softball Federation announced they were preparing a joint proposal to revive play of both sports at the 2020 Summer Olympics.
In August 2011, Olympic news source reported that the ISF and IBAF would not rush into an Olympic proposal, and that the IBAF was working on forming a temporary commission to analyze the prospect of a joint proposal. "In the past, baseball and softball were running alone, and the result was that baseball and softball stayed out," IBAF president Riccardo Fraccari said in reference to their decades-long push for Olympic inclusion.
On September 8, 2013, the International Olympic Committee voted to reinstate wrestling, defeating the combined baseball-softball bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Under new IOC policies that shift the Games to an "event-based" program rather than sport-based, the host organizing committee can now also propose the addition of sports to the program alongside the permanent "core" events. A second bid for baseball-softball to be included as an event in 2020 was shortlisted by the Tokyo Organizing Committee on June 22, 2015. On August 3, 2016, during the 129th IOC Session in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the IOC approved the Tokyo Organizing Committee's final shortlist of five sports, which included baseball, to be included in the program during the 2020 Summer Olympics. Baseball will not be included in the 2024 Paris Olympics, but it is expected that it will be included along with softball, in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics due to baseball's popularity in the United States.
USA Baseball started using minor league athletes for the first time in 1999 with the 2000 Olympic Team being one of the first professional national teams to represent the U.S. in international competition. Led by Manager Tommy Lasorda and featuring players Ben Sheets, Ernie Young, and Brad Wilkerson, Team USA went 8–1 in the tournament en route to the Olympic gold medal. The 2000 Olympic Team was later named the USOC Team of the Year.
After failing to qualify for the Athens 2004 Games, the U.S. returned to the Olympics in 2008, finishing with a 6–3 record and claiming the bronze medal with an 8–4 defeat of Japan.