Team USA to play 4 exhibitions in N.C.
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DURHAM, N.C.: The U.S. Olympic baseball team has an exhibition schedule. What the Americans don't have yet is a roster.
While USA Baseball officials announced on Tuesday that the team's pre-Olympic schedule would include four exhibition games against Canada in North Carolina, U.S. executive Bob Watson said Team USA won't settle on its 24 players for another two months.
"We look at a lot of guys, and we like a lot of guys," manager Davey Johnson said. "It's just a tough process."
The toughest job belongs to Watson, who as the general manager of professional baseball operations for USA Baseball is charged with helping select Johnson's roster for Beijing.
The former GM of the Houston Astros and New York Yankees said he and his staff continue to evaluate a preliminary list of 1,000 players who aren't on major league rosters. That group will be whittled to about 60 by the end of June with the final roster announced in mid-July — roughly two weeks before the team arrives in North Carolina to work out for its exhibition series against the Canadians.
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"We'll have a series of conference calls ... (with) our staff, our scouts in the field, and we have a rule — you can't make the team unless somebody has seen you (play)," Watson said. "I want the latest report, because there's a lot of (major league) GMs who are in trouble today because they went off of last year's report. ... We want the latest set of eyes to see these guys, and we'll talk about them, we'll plug them in. That's my job."
Watson said the team is scheduled to arrive in the Raleigh-Durham area on July 30. The Americans will play Canada once at USA Baseball's national training complex in Cary on Aug. 1, then three times in Durham from Aug. 2-4 before departing for China.
The U.S. team opens play in Beijing on Aug. 13 in its first Olympic game since winning the gold medal at the Sydney Games in 2000; the Americans failed to qualify for the 2004 games in Athens. Baseball and softball were dropped for the next Olympics in London in 2012, but officials are trying to gain reinstatement for the following Olympiad.
The earliest baseball can win reinstatement is October 2009, when the IOC considers the sports program for 2016 at the next Olympic Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark.
"Baseball is really an international sport," said Watson, also Major League Baseball's vice president of on-field operations. "Going around the world, exposing different countries to the sport, with the world classic, baseball in the Olympics is a natural. It is my belief that softball and baseball will be voted back in."
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