As Bryce Harper considered his options in free agency in 2018, he knew he wanted to be in a place that felt like home. He knew he wanted to win. He knew he wanted a deal that he felt reflected his value. And he wanted to be allowed to play in the Olympics.
So he tried to add a clause to his Philadelphia Phillies contract that would make him an exception to the Major League Baseball policy against allowing major leaguers to play in the Games.
“It didn’t get that far,” he laments, mostly because the collective-bargaining agreement does not allow players to negotiate individual agreements on international play. But Harper grew up glued to the TV during the Olympics, and he played for Team USA in 2008 and ’09, winning consecutive Pan American Championships as a junior. He has been MLB’s most passionate evangelist for Olympic participation ever since.
“You want to grow the game, right?” he says. “Why wouldn’t you want to grow it at the peak [of sports]?”
For the first time in the history of the sport, MLB might be poised to do just that. In case the voice of Harper—an eight-time All-Star and two-time National League MVP—isn’t loud enough, he has a very powerful ally.
“I’d like to play in the Olympics,” says Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani, the game’s brightest star and one of the most famous people in his native Japan, through interpreter Will Ireton. “Also, knowing the fact that there will be non-baseball fans watching the games as well, I think it would be really good for the baseball industry.”
Baseball was a full Olympic sport from 1992 through 2008, but major leaguers were never involved—first because their presence violated the amateur policy, and then because the league declined to pause the season to send them. So quadrennial after quadrennial, as leagues in Cuba, Japan and South Korea sent their best players, the U.S. trotted out ragtag bunches of minor leaguers—not exactly fodder for high ratings. The International Olympic Committee voted in ’05 to eliminate baseball and softball from the program; IOC president Jacques Rogge cited the lack of major leaguers as the main issue.
But beginning in 2019, IOC rules have allowed host nations to add sports popular with their citizens as one-offs, so Japan brought back baseball for the Tokyo Games, held in ’21, and the United States is expected to do the same in Los Angeles in ’28.
At first, it seemed likely that this Olympic cycle would look the same as all the others, and in Tokyo, it did. But there is a growing push to make room for major leaguers in L.A., thanks in part to extensive lobbying by Casey Wasserman, CEO of his namesake sports agency and the chair of the LA2028 board.
“I remain open-minded on that topic,” commissioner Rob Manfred says. “Maybe the thing that I found most persuasive that Casey’s saying is: Forget about what's gonna happen with baseball in the Olympics long term, because I think we all know when you’re in Paris, they’re probably not gonna build a baseball stadium. But when you’re in L.A., it is an opportunity that we need to think about.”
That might sound lukewarm. For Manfred, it constitutes a full-throated endorsement. Indeed, he brought Wasserman to the February owners’ meetings to give a presentation. Wasserman reportedly laid out a scenario in which six or eight teams could play a tournament over five or six days in mid-July, meaning MLB would only have to extend the All-Star break by two or three days to accommodate it. Perhaps the Olympics could replace the All-Star Game; perhaps, in deference to Fox, whose $729 million annual deal includes that event, the two could run side by side. The IOC and national governing bodies would pay for some of the cost of insuring the players’ contracts. The next World Baseball Classic, in 2026, could serve as a qualifying tournament for the Olympics.
“[Wasserman] was very persuasive,” Manfred says.
He has several more pitchmen if he needs them. Harper, who spent part of a press conference during the 2023 National League Championship Series stumping for major league Olympic participation, says he has mentioned the idea to Manfred. (He says the commissioner was noncommittal.) Ohtani says he has not had an occasion to share his opinion with Manfred but will do so if it comes up.
“Putting the nation’s colors on your chest, there’s nothing like it,” Harper says. “There’s no greater feeling than going into another country and winning and hearing your anthem blast. So I’m hoping we can get something done. Obviously it’s tough logistically, but it would be a lot of fun to be able to get baseball there and have the best players there doing it to represent their countries.”
Puerto Rican Twins shortstop Carlos Correa, Japanese Cubs lefty Shōta Imanaga, Dominican Yankees right fielder Juan Soto and American Brewers right fielder Christian Yelich are among the 2024 All-Stars who’ve expressed a desire to play at the Olympics. At least one thought he already could: “That’s not allowed?” American Mets first baseman Pete Alonso asks, his face falling. “That’s really—that’s really bad news.” He adds, “That’s a great way to showcase our game worldwide, because it’s one thing being MLB and having our season, but the five rings—that’s different.”
American Red Sox center fielder Jarren Duran was in the minors during the qualifying rounds before the Tokyo Olympics and played in those games; he was called up to the majors just in time to become ineligible to make the Olympic team. As he celebrated his major league debut, he wondered if the team couldn’t have called him up a month later and let him earn the rings tattoo he was planning for his right biceps. “It was bittersweet,” he says.
Tony Clark, the head of the players’ union, says most players want the opportunity to give it a try. (He adds that he always wanted to play for the U.S. but never had the chance.) So he expects the union will add the Olympics to its list of priorities heading into the CBA negotiations.
“Not just for 2028,” he adds. “I think it's probably an important discussion to be had beyond 2028, knowing that the opportunity to have it in 2028 can be a building block toward it being more consistently in the Olympics.”
The league is more focused on 2028, according to someone involved in the negotiations. The 2032 Games will take place in Brisbane, Australia—very convenient for players in Japanese and Korean leagues but much more complicated for MLB. That program will not be finalized until 2025, but an official lamented the idea of having to go quadrennial-to-quadrennial, making the sport’s case every time. The whole thing offers something of a catch-22: MLB says it won’t send its best players to the Olympics unless baseball returns to being a full Olympic sport. The IOC says baseball won’t return to being a full Olympic sport unless it starts sending its best players.
Harper and Ohtani, and many of their peers, are ready to fulfill their end of that bargain.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bryce Harper, Shohei Ohtani Making the Case for MLB Players to Be at 2028 Olympics.
