McClatchy Washington Bureau

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BEIJING — America's national pastime isn't getting much respect in Olympic land.

The Summer Games that began here Friday are the last scheduled to feature both baseball and softball, and players from around the world who’ve seen the sports spread in popularity are crying foul.

They say this year's international roster shows the two sports aren't just U.S. phenomena. Some 10 nations, ranging from the United States to South Korea to the Netherlands, are competing this month for either baseball or softball medals, revealing the sports’ global reach.

Nonetheless, the Swiss-based International Olympic Committee voted by secret ballot in 2005 to oust the two sports from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, shocking players who said they had no idea baseball and softball were even on the chopping block.

The Olympic committee will meet again in October of next year in Denmark to decide whether to let the two sports back into the 2016 Olympic Games. Players said that made these Beijing games their last chance to show the committee why their sports should stay Olympic.

"It carries more responsibility for us to show how important baseball is, not only to the United States but to the Netherlands and to Cuba," said pitcher Brandon Knight, who's on this year's U.S. baseball team.

Harvey Stevenson, leader of the Canadian softball team, said his sport will suffer globally with the cuts because International Olympic Committee funding will stop flowing to the 130-country International Softball Federation, which distributes the money to national softball delegations.

"Softball is growing in countries that didn't even have a program before," Stevenson said. "I think the game's in good shape. It's incumbent upon softball to give the International Olympic Committee that information."

The committee decides Olympic sports based on 33 criteria, such as the number of spectators attending events, the sports' environmental impact and the availability of the world’s best players for the games. Men's baseball only became an Olympic sport in 1992, while women's softball joined the games in 1996.

The U.S. team has won all three softball gold medals, while Cuba has won three of the four baseball gold medals. The U.S. team brought home gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The elimination of baseball and softball marked the first time a sport had been cut from the Olympics since polo was dropped from the 1936 games. The two sports will compete with five others, including rugby and golf, to return to the 2016 games. Only two of the seven candidates can join the games, which is capped at 28 sports.

After the 2005 vote, the committee’s president Jacques Rogge said "the games should have sports that are clean and have the best athletes at the games (in the case of baseball) and had (sic) a universal appeal (in the case of softball)," according to a summary on the committee’s Web site.

Before international committee members voted, they had received a report on every Olympic sport, which had noted Major League Baseball did not allow its players to take time off from their professional schedules to participate in the Olympic Games, depriving the Olympics of the world’s best players. Other professional organizations in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere have agree to made their best players available for the Olympics.

The report also found 13 of the 1,051 doping tests run in 2003 on baseball players had produced results violating anti-doping rules. The report noted that baseball games had also received scant television coverage during the 2004 Athens Olympics even as its ticket sales surpassed those of other sports such as badminton and judo.

Ticket sales for softball games in Athens were less than a third of those for baseball’s, the report found. On the positive side, none of the doping tests of softball players in 2003 produced results violating anti-doping rules.

Olympics historian David Wallechinsky said the international committee dropped baseball principally because the U.S. major leagues wouldn't release their players. Softball, being a women's equivalent of baseball in the committee’s eyes, suffered collateral damage, he said.

This year's U.S. team, for example, doesn’t feature a single current major-league player. And with many top international players in the major leagues, other national teams also are going without star talent.

"I think Major League Baseball made a mistake here," Wallechinsky said. "This was its chance to expose the sport around the world, and Major League Baseball just lost it. Softball paid the price for being a sister sport to baseball."

That reality has been a harsh pill for the U.S. softball team, which will see its gold-medal run cut short after Beijing no matter how they play this month. Players said they planned to lobby committee members after these Olympics and convince them that softball was distinct from baseball and deserved to be back in the 2016 games.

"It's about us doing whatever we can to show the world the sport," said star U.S. softball player Jessica Mendoza. "That’s all we can do."