With some real leadership baseball can get back in Olympics

They're giving out medals in trampoline, BMX and (the scandalous) badminton in the Olympics this year. But not in baseball or softball.

And while the Olympics have had a great first week with Michael Phelps, Gabby Douglas and other riveting storylines in London, baseball and softball don't seem missed all that much, either here or abroad.

Softball might actually be missed more, as it truly did feature the greatest players in the world into a tournament. Major League Baseball's reluctance to break up its season is mostly to blame for why the sport was dropped, and softball was the innocent casualty.

"Most people tell me that without commitment from MLB, it's not going to work," International Softball Federation president Don Porter told the Associated Press. "It would certainly strengthen our bid if the MLB says they will commit their players."

But there's some hope that baseball and softball can return, perhaps in 2020, if the sports can come under an international umbrella together in order to promote it. Softball deserves to come back. Baseball needs Bud Selig or his replacement -- whoever that may be someday -- to have the guts to commit MLB to making this work. And the players' union, seeing its athletes get a great marketing opportunity, are unlikely to stand in the way, either.

It's once every four years. Let's build a week or 10 days into the schedule and revamp the All-Star break to let the best in the world play. While the players are away in the Olympics, a replacement for the All-Star Game could be played with the leftover players and let the best American, Dominican, Mexican, Cuban, Japanese, Venezuelan, Korean and Canadian MLB players play for their countries. It would be a heck of a lot more meaningful than the World Baseball Classic. Quick: Who won the last one?

(It was Japan.) The next WBC is next spring.

But the WBC is basically just a spring training event. A really good Olympic tournament - even a really short one, with players in midseason form -- could be just what baseball needs to really grow internationally. The Japan league says it can make it work. So do the leagues in Taiwan, South Korea and Australia.

MLB just lacks the leadership to make this happen. And that's a shame.

Related: Baseball in the Olympics -- Softball in the Olympics