Major League Baseball to sponsor US Olympic softball team

Major League Baseball is using its financial muscle to support U.S. women's softball team, which alrey is assured a spot in Tokyo Olympics while American men's baseball team struggles to qualify.

MLB anunced an agreement Thursday to become presenting sponsor of women's "Stand Beside Her" tour, a slate of exhibition games leing up to Olympic tournament from July 22-28.

"We're both bat and ball sports. Even though we're t same sport, re are so many similarities that you just can't igre," said Kim Ng, MLB's senior vice president for baseball operations. "It was important for us to make sure that y have this ackwledgement and recognition of ir ability and ir talent."

Softball began as an Olympic sport for 1996 Atlanta Games. U.S. won gold medals in 1996, 2000 and 2004 with players that included Dot Richardson, Jennie Finch and Jessica Mendoza, n lost to Japan in 2008 gold medal game.

Baseball and softball were dropped for next two Olympics, n restored for this year, when U.S. and Japan will be joined by Australia, Cana, Italy and Mexico for games in Fukushima and Yokohama but t Tokyo. sports are likely to be dropped for 2024 in Paris but could return four years later in Los Angeles.

U.S. men's baseball team stumbled in its first attempt to qualify, wasting a ninth-inning le against Mexico in final game of Premier12 tournament in vember and losing in 10th. U.S. has two more chances to join Israel, Japan, Mexico and South Korea in Olympic field: an Americas tournament in Arizona from March 22-26 and a final tournament in Taiwan from April 1-5.

MLB is t allowing players on 40-man big league rosters to compete in qualifying, and few top pitching prospects were at vember tournament.

Softball has such issues. Olympics are sport's highest-profile event.

" platform for us is 10 times bigger," American outfielder Haylie McCleney said. "For us, it's a great opportunity for people that have never watched softball before, people that have only followed it at collegiate level, to really see how fun our game is to watch, how pure it is. If people are baseball fans, I guarantee y're going to love softball because it's pretty much just a faster game — it's shorter, it's quicker, it's more entertaining to watch, in my opinion."

2008 gold medal softball game took 1 hour, 45 minutes — less than half 3:45 aver for this year's World Series.

As part of deal with MLB, softball team's official training facility will be at Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Vero Beach, Florida, old Dodgertown spring training camp.

MLB Network will include programming from tour, which currently starts Feb. 4 in Tampa, Florida, and has about three dozen stops.

U.S. women's soccer team has attracted huge television audiences. MLB sees softball as an opportunity for sport's growth.

"se are world-class athletes," Ng said. "Because we have t been in Olympics for last 12 years, y just haven't h that st. So it's really important at this point that we show as much support as we can for m."

(Im Credit: Pixabay)