Men's fastball and the Canada Games

Apparently there is a move afoot to remove Men's Fastball from the Canada Games.

Fitzroyfastball readers, click here to sign the petition to encourage the organizers to keep men's softball as part of the program.

forwarded on by Wynn Fenwick:

2009 Canada Summer Games Selection

Women's Softball is in the 2009 Canada Summer Games but the bad news is that Men's softball is in grave danger of not being in the 2009 Games.

The list of selected sports originally published did not include men's softball. Softball Canada noted what we felt was an error in the selection process and appealed. The error had to do with how the federal government scoring was administered. We felt that, as per the selection criteria, men's and women's softball should have received equal scores. The Canada Games Council's position was that scoring was to be separated by gender. This was a critical difference because Sport Canada policy does not recognize men's softball, as it is a non-Olympic version of a sport that has an Olympic designation. That resulted in a score of "0" for men's softball from Sport Canada. Treating the genders equally as per the accepted criteria would have, in our opinion, put men's softball in the Games.

The appeal went to an independent review officer who ultimately ruled that Softball Canada's interpretation was correct. He struck down the decision to exclude men's softball and offered the Canada Games Council 3 options:

1) To correct the errors in the current selection process - we believe this would have put men's softball in the 2009 Games.

2) To put all sports in the 2005 Games on the 2009 program - this would have put men's softball in the 2009 Games.

3) To throw out the whole process and start again. This would allow the Canada Games Council to potentially separate the men's and women's scoring - likely resulting in men's softball exclusion.

Unfortunately the Canada Games Council has chosen option #3. We had presented the case that option #3 was like throwing out the results of a game, after it was played by the accepted rules. Further, that re-doing the process, would likely lead to a pre-determined outcome, as the essential scoring results are basically already known.

Softball Canada will be closely monitoring the new selection process. It will likely, however, be a significant challenge to have men's softball selected under the anticipated revised rules.

Sign the petition if you think Men's Softball should remain in the Canada Games.