Baseball could make an Olympic comeback in 2020


Baseball and softball are on the shortlist for the 2020 summer games in Tokyo, the event's organizing committee announced Monday. The sports were cut from the competition after 2008, when Beijing played host.
Other sports whose International Olympic Committee-recognized federations could make the cut are bowling, karate, roller sports, climbing, squash, surfing, and kung fu. Don't expect the more outlandish sports of the bunch to get approved, though: Tokyo is trying to save money on the games by making use of existing sports facilities, rather than building new ones, as Quartz notes.
The Tokyo committee will decide in September which sports to propose to the IOC for 2020 consideration, so you've got a couple of months to drool over the possibility of Olympic roller derby.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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