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As special as the World Baseball Classic has become, the 2028 Olympics would give baseball an even greater platform, Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper believes.
The Summer Games are headed to Los Angeles that year, and Major League Baseball and the Players Association are already working through the costs and logistics of sending big leaguers to the international tournament.
“Obviously, the WBC is great, but it’s not the Olympics,” Harper said Friday in Houston, where he’s playing for Team USA in the WBC. “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 of the fans watching it. I hope L.A. ’28 happens.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred believes it will.
“We’re a lot closer to there than we were the last time we talked about it,” Manfred said last month after the league’s owners meetings. “There’s some issues with the MLBPA that we just need to resolve. I sense a lot of momentum towards playing in L.A. in 2028. I think we’re going to get over those issues. I think people have come to appreciate that the Olympics on U.S. soil is a unique marketing opportunity for the game.
“We got a lot of players interested in doing it, and I feel pretty good about the idea we’ll get there.”
Bruce Meyer, the head of the players’ union, confirmed Saturday that active discussions are underway.
Scheduling is near the top of the docket for the league and union. MLB wants to fit the All-Star Game and the Olympics into the same summer break, extending the usual downtime the league has halfway through its calendar.
The league and the players can probably accommodate the Olympics without moving the All-Star Game’s typical Tuesday date. Trying to reschedule it would affect another stakeholder, Fox, which televises the game.
The league office believes that playing the All-Star Game on the West Coast in 2028 would make the most sense geographically, a person briefed on the league’s thinking who was not authorized to speak publicly said. It has not awarded the Midsummer Classic to a host city yet, but San Francisco is a front-runner, the San Francisco Standard reported.
The Giants haven’t hosted an All-Star Game since 2007. A formal bidding process has to unfold before a host is finalized.
MLB players need insurance to play in the WBC, and that would almost certainly be the case during the Olympics as well. MLB teams will want protection for their investments, and players won’t wager their salaries to participate.
But insurance brought hand-wringing to the WBC, where star players were turned away because the policy wouldn’t cover them — a problem that could only wind up magnified for the Olympics.
The insurance issues are unique to MLB, where players receive higher salaries than their counterparts in other top baseball leagues. Japan’s national team, for example, has never turned a player away from the WBC because of an insurance concern, according to a Japanese baseball official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“From an ownership standpoint, I totally get it,” Harper said. “As players and owners, we have to come to an agreement that works for everybody … understanding that you can get hurt playing during the regular season, you can get hurt playing during the Olympics.
“And I think if you look at it in a hockey way, then you see that. Sidney Crosby got hurt and he wasn’t able to play the gold-medal game. And his team knows that as he is going into that tournament. So you kind of just have to understand that it is real. It could happen.
“But there’s nothing like representing your country.”
For insurance and all other costs, the league and union need to figure out which party — the league, the union or the Olympics’ organizing committee — foots the bill.
In that vein, accommodations will be part of the discussion. Will MLB players be comfortable staying in the Olympic Village?
Also to be determined is what happens with the rest of the league, the players who are not participating in the All-Star Game or the Olympics. MLB could try to stage exhibitions during that time to keep them fresh and keep fans coming through the gates.
MLB has not previously sent a contingent to the Olympics.
The National Hockey League, however, has often sent its players to the winter games, and if hockey’s negotiation process is any indication, baseball’s could last into 2027.
The NHL and its players’ union announced an agreement for the 2026 Winter Olympics in July of 2025, less than a year before the competition was to begin.
In baseball, the Olympics discussion will likely be rolled into the overall collective bargaining negotiations between the league and union, which are set to begin in the next couple of months. But the sides can also reach an agreement separately, after general bargaining has concluded, if need be.
“I’m hoping the next (collective bargaining) agreement can happen where teams and players can come to an agreement on taking that two-week break, especially it being in our home country,” Harper said. “It would be great for baseball.”
Two years ago, Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive and the head of the 2028 L.A. games’ organizing effort, met with MLB owners to discuss the potential of bringing big leaguers to the games.
Wasserman’s future leading LA28 is in limbo, however, following the Department of Justice’s disclosure of files related to Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in August 2019 in his jail cell while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Wasserman’s name appeared in the documents. He has said he had no contact with Epstein in 20 years.
Asked last month if he was concerned that an association with Epstein would be detrimental to baseball, Manfred said he didn’t “like to answer hypothetical questions.” Manfred then said MLB’s efforts to attend the Olympics do not depend on Wasserman.
“Look, our dealings are not with Casey,” Manfred said. “Our dealings are with the institution of the Olympics.”