2016 Olympic Baseball... Done Right.

Here's an idea that floated through my brain just now. Baseball is getting phased out of the Olympics after this year, but is a possibility to be brought back in 2016. If the Olympics were to that, it would probably require having major leaguers be eligible to play.

There are two ways you could do that. The first is to let players play hooky from their big league (or minor league for some lesser country players) teams for two weeks; teams could put them on an DL-equivalent and bring up some minor league help to fill out their rosters for a couple of weeks.

The second way is to copy the NHL and take two weeks off for the Olympics. The problem with that approach is that baseball is pushing the edges of habitable climate with their current schedule; northern cities are barely warm enough for baseball in early April and night games in late October are rather wintry. Playing Detroit's opening day in late March or seeing parkas on fans in Game seven of the World Series precludes taking a break.

Or does it? Let's try these modifications.

(1) Skip the All-star game for 2016. That will free up half a week.
(2) Finish the season on Wednesday, October 5th and start the playoffs on Friday the 7th. There's another half-week.
(3) Start Spring Training a week early
(4) Have what would normally be the last week of spring training (March 28-April 3) be Show the Flag week. These will be regular-season games at sites that do not presently have major league teams, have major-league level stadiums and are habitable in that time frame.

San Antonio
New Orleans
San Juan
Santo Domingo
Caracas
Vancouver
Mexico City
Monterey
Beijing
Tokyo
Osaka
Sapporo
Seoul
Sydney

That's 14 sites. Site 15 will be whoever is going to host the Olympics, assuming the stadium is either indoors or habitable in late march.

We'd play six games with teams playing three games as a "home" team in one town and three games as an "away" team in a second town. We'd keep the teams that are in the Asian time zones over their for the week and the teams in the American time zones there for the week. I recommend sending the Yankees to Caracas for their home games; if Chavez is still in charge, it will frost his cookies.

That will free up a two week break for the Olympics and some interesting baseball.