Five-ring circus: The Thread of the XXXIII Olympiad

Have you folks forgotten already that the softball hall of fame is in OKC? It’s only been there since the 70s.

https://www.usasoftball.com/national-hall-of-fame-museum/about-the-national-softball-hall-of-fame/

 

Maybe the LA Games should hold their basketball competitions in Springfield, Mass.

 

Here's the solution to the softball situation:

Bad News Bears Field - Wikimapia

Three adjoining Little League baseball fields (similar in size to Olympic level softball) could easily be converted to two high quality softball diamonds

Existing wooden bleachers at one field (the movie location) would be removed to raise modern temporary seating for probably 10-12,000 for the two fields. If the Olympic Committee saw fit, one field could probably be built with a 15-20,000 capacity.

Following the Games temporary seating would be removed and the fields resodded and returned to suitable condition for use by the West LA Little Leagues. Field lighting and other improvements could be left in place.

 

Technically it isn't even in the family, which is part of the problem. Under the modern "Agenda 2020" there are some sports that each time get run as a one-off because they are locally popular. Karate, surfing, and baseball-softball were among those in Tokyo, and that's where breaking qualifies for Paris. (Get prepared to hear the phrase 'b-boy' and 'b-girl' a lot). Baseball and softball were deliberately staged on the same field in Tokyo for that exact reason: big in Japan, but not to big to everyone that they got their own stadiums. The tournaments were only six teams and they were short enough that they didn't overlap (they were also, IIRC, in the region that was affected by the earthquake in 2011). I don't remember what they did about the mound, but it is worth noting that Japanese baseball infields are typically all-dirt, which means they'd be more easily convertible to softball.

I'm just shocked that given the Pac-12's role in softball over the last few decades that there isn't a suitable stadium in southern California. Like I said before, I was stunned USC doesn't even have a program. That feels like an idea that might get overruled by popular outcry. At the very least, move it up or down the coast to Stanford or Cal or San Diego or something.

2032 is already booked for Brisbane. Baseball is a thing in Australia but I'm not sure if it's that much of a thing.

 

Other than the distance, OKC is an ideal location for softball. It has the crown jewel stadium for the sport.

 

That's great, but the distance between LA and OKC is roughly equivalent to that between Paris and the front in the Ukraine-Russia war. Now, Paris is a bad example because instead of having their surfing in the Atlantic or Mediterranean, they're doing it in Tahiti, but they're clearly trying to reverse engineer this to make a buck.

 

I thought the whole point was to save a lot of bucks by using an existing, high quality facility instead of building a new venue or pouring a ton of money into upgrading a subpar one just for the Olympics.

Aren't they trying to cut down on the expense of hosting the games and the wastefulness of all these stadiums built for essentially a single use? Once you leave the L.A. area, the distance doesn't seem to matter that much to me as long as it's still in the host country.

 

Mrs. W was commenting last night that the really spent a lot of time on the good looking heptathlete and barely showed anyone else.

 

I think it would be cool for the host nation to spread out the Olympic events. It would allow more locals to see Olympic events. My wife and daughter are already talking about going to OKC for softball in four years. Yeah, we'd like to go to LA and bounce to different events over a few days - but driving over to OKC for softball and canoe seems much more doable (and with a kid in college at that point, more affordable).

 

Soccer has been spread out for a while now. In addition to Sanford Stadium, the 1996 Olympics also had games in Birmingham, Miami, Orlando and Washington.

But there is something undeniably lost when you aren’t in the main host city. Other than family and a few dozen sport-specific diehards, how many people from overseas are going to divert to Oklahoma to experience the Olympics? It’s not quite the same when you are mostly running into folks from Wichita and Plano and El Reno.

 

I guess my argument was that an existing facility two time zones away is so far as to defeat the purpose. "Still in the host country" means something different if you're just going one European country away.