REPORTING FROM ... BEIJING

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If softball gets cancelled from the Olympics maybe Cat Osterman can play for the Padres.

S.O.S.—SAVE OUR SOFTBALL
Given that we based our whole Olympic preview issue on the premise that The Games are all about the women, we decided to stop by a press conference with people determined to preserve softball as an Olympic sport. In 2005, the IOC unceremoniously dumped softball for the 2012 Summer Games in London. This despite the fact that the sport has grown from 86 countries to 130 since its inclusion in the 1996 Games, despite its popularity in the
big TV markets of the U.S. and China, despite the fact that (shameless plug alert) ESPN shows it all spring, and despite the fact that Cat Osterman has a really cool Under Armour commercial, not to mention a wicked peel-off dropball.

But the IOC was mad at baseball for its doping problems, among other things, and didn't like the fact that the U.S. softball team never loses, and so decided to dump both baseball and softball together. Led by Olympic legend and Women's Sports Foundation founder Donna de Varona, the women are fighting back, and will be working the back rooms of the IOC to make sure softball is back in the rotation in 2016. She's using the IOC's stated goals to make her case. "The IOC says that it wants clean sports and women's sports," de Varona said. She didn't need to add that softball fits both bills.

Rubilena Rojas, a player on the Venezuela squad, admitted the Yanks dominate, and right on cue Team USA had two more routs yesterday. So what? The sport is making big gains in Latin America. "They've begun to implement softball into the high schools, like in the States," Rojas said. "That's giving more chances to girls like me, who have baseball backgrounds." Those chances pay off, Rojas said. She and all her Venezuelan teammates all earned scholarships to U.S. universities to play the sport. "That's 15 people the sport has helped to get an education and become stronger women."

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