WBC’s Team USA Baseball Building Momentum for MLB Players to Participate in 2028 Summer Olympics

Given the recent success of Team USA hockey at the Winter Olympics in Italy, is MLB far behind the National Hockey League in pausing its 2028 season to allow their top players to participate in the upcoming Summer Games in Los Angeles?

Omitting from league play the brightest MLB stars—New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge, Philadelphia Phillies’ Bryce Harper, and pitching sensations Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, would be a challenging sell to fans by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.

But, where there is a will to grow the game’s popularity globally, the commissioner’s office and the MLB Players Association could find a way to meet at some middle ground. How the MLB players would get time off from their teams for a couple weeks, and trade their time playing for their country may require the 30 franchises either to call up minor leaguers and work with an altered lineup, or have an MLB-wide two-week summer vacation.

Prior to Sunday’s spring training game in Bradenton, Florida, Pittsburgh Pirates General Manager Ben Cherington told The Epoch Times that he appreciates the concept of having MLB’s biggest draws representing the United States in the upcoming Summer Games in Los Angeles, but he has questions on how to get the job done.

“If there are events that are clearly good for the game, and good for growing the game, we’re supportive of them,” Cherington said. ‘The devil is in the details. How to do it in a way of protecting the interest of baseball, and protecting the interest of the Pirates? These are questions I have.”

Since the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, the NHL has paused its league-wide schedule during the Olympics to showcase its best skaters and goalies. The National Basketball Association since 1992 has encouraged its players to take part in the Summer Olympics. The NBA season starts in the fall, and players who qualify for the Olympic squad play in their off-season, and the exposure expands the popularity of basketball around the world.

The Team USA basketball roster that won gold at Barcelona, Spain in 1992, is still remembered as the “Dream Team.” Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan led Team USA to an undefeated 8-0 record en route to the gold medal.

There is no reason the same lasting success couldn’t be achieved in Olympic baseball. The Team USA lineup in the World Baseball Classic, which includes Bobby Witt Jr., Alex Bregman, and Kyle Schwarber, and that is dominating in all its pool games thus far with wins over Great Britain and Brazil, and in exhibition games against MLB’s San Francisco Giants (15–1) and Colorado Rockies (14–4) in Arizona, appears to be setting the table for the next level of international competition.

Team USA’s first baseman Bryce Harper spoke with USA Today’s MLB columnist Bob Nightengale on Friday about his wish for the opportunity to play in the 2028 Summer Olympics. Harper expressed his hope for MLB to change how the Olympics are viewed by club owners.

“Obviously the WBC is great, but it isn’t the Olympics,” Harper said. “That’s no disrespect to the WBC or anything. But everybody knows when the Olympics are on. Everybody is watching. Doesn’t matter what sport it is. It could be the most random sport and it has all the fans watching it. I hope LA ’28 happens. I’m hoping the next CBA agreement can happen where teams and players can come to an agreement on taking the two-week break, especially it being in our own country. It would be great for baseball. You talk about growing the game and being able to grow it at that, at the highest level would help out tremendously.”

There should be no difficulty in attracting MLB’s best of the best to play in the 2028 Olympics. All games are scheduled to be played July 13–19 in the 56,000-seat Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Once the WBC championship game on March 17 concludes at LoanDepot Park in Miami, odds are that pre-planning between players and MLB management will pick up in earnest.

Although professional baseball players have been allowed to participate in Summer Olympic Games since 2000, MLB hasn’t permitted players on 40-man team rosters to partake. Longtime MLB pitcher Roy Oswalt, who played in the 2005 World Series for the Houston Astros and in the 2009 WBC, was part of the Team USA in 2000 that won Olympic baseball gold in Australia. The team was mostly all minor leaguers.

“The Olympics were the most exciting moment of my career. There’s something about putting on a USA jersey. The way things are now, I think it’s going to be hard to stop an MLB season completely. It would be hard for the guys to miss regular season games,” Oswalt said to The Epoch Times on Sunday during a telephone conversation from his home in Mississippi.

The excitement stirred for the hockey community by Team USA winning its first gold medal since 1980 has legs. Two years is a short span for sports fans with long memories, and MLB superstars enjoy too much fame and success nationally to be overlooked for the grand stage of Olympic competition.

A WBC blueprint for creating an international baseball footprint should go a long way toward putting pressure on MLB owners to change how they do business, at least every four years.