IBAF Helping In Women's Baseball Movement

The fact that the IBAF is completely supportive of women's baseball and has added women's baseball to its bid to the IOC to bring baseball back to the 2016 Olympics will help the growth of women's and girls' baseball tremendously. Most girls and women don't even know that they do have opportunities to play real baseball with people of their own gender, but this will help change that. And, of course, if baseball is brought back, then the popularity of girls' and women's baseball will soar.

Some people don't like the fact that women's sanctioned international level softball is no longer part of the IBAF and that this hurts both baseball's and softball's chances of being reinstated to the Olympics.

However, I am VERY happy that they are separate and that the ISF refused to partner with the IBAF in being reinstated to the Olympics. Instead, the ISF wants men's softball to be added to the Olympics.

That's all fine for me, because baseball and softball are completely different sports, and women have been pushed into playing softball in lieu of playing baseball since the mid-1800s in the U.S. Softball has been seen by society as the female version of baseball... which it is not in the least.

So, what this means is, if the IOC decides to reinstate baseball and adds women's baseball to the agenda, women's baseball will FINALLY be noticed on a global stage and will grow and will become accepted by many societies that have a hard time accepting it currently. Also, if men's softball gets added to women's softball, this will strengthen the separation of baseball and softball, which would make me and so many others EXTREMELY happy!