The sport of softball could be facing an identity crisis.
International Softball Federation president Don E. Porter has been approached by baseball leaders proposing that the two sports work together to get onto the program for the 2020 Games, but there could be a big catch.
Instead of simply preparing a joint bid to get both sports in as they're now known, they may have to unite under one umbrella - perhaps at the cost of Porter's sport retaining its name.
It's still early in the process, but Porter and the ISF have asked the International Olympic Committee to clarify how it will decide which sports get into the 2020 program and whether softball and baseball would have to unite under one governing body to get in if only one sport will be added as expected.
''First of all, we need to determine can we do this? Is the IOC going to allow us to be able to do this?'' Porter said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Women's College World Series. ''Would they support it, or what?''
Softball and baseball will both be absent from the Olympics starting with the 2012 London Games because of a 2005 secret ballot by the IOC to remove the sports. Attempts to get that decision overturned and to get the sports back in for the 2016 Games have failed, so the focus is on 2020.
Porter said he has had several meetings with the Switzerland-based International Baseball Federation in recent months to figure out how a joint bid would work.
''Do we give away our identity? I think that's the thing that worries more than anything else is to give up the identity of our sport in order to get back to the Olympic program, and we're not assured that we'll get back to the Olympic program.''
''We don't want to go out there and have people say, 'Well, that's women's baseball,''' he added.
Porter and other softball leaders had previously tried to distance the sport from baseball, despite the obvious similarities in basic game play. Softball's bid to get into the 2016 Olympics was largely concentrated on the sport's lack of problems with doping or steroids, its ability to bring the sport's top players to the Games and the opportunities it provides for female athletes - none of which are commonalities with baseball.
''We've got a problem with that,'' Porter said. ''If we decide it's in our best interests to go with baseball because it gives us the best chance to succeed, to gain our Olympic status, are we then saying that baseball and their problems - which in the beginning was doping and not the best players - we're saying that that's not a problem? There's things there that we have to be, I think, a little careful of at the time.
''That's why I wanted to have as much discussion as we could have with the baseball people to see clearly where they were.''
International Baseball Federation president Riccardo Fraccari points out that his sport has ramped up its anti-doping program, citing 19,000 tests in recent years, and is seeking solutions to get major league players involved.
''I hope he (Porter) understands that a union is the only solution for the Olympics,'' Fraccari said from his Rome office. ''The IOC is going to consider adding only one sport in 2013 and we can both get in with baseball for men and softball for women. I'm very positive about this union.''
Fraccari doesn't see any other major team sports as rivals, naming only karate as a possible opponent. He says the IOC will select a short list of five or six sports for evaluation at its meetings next month.
''That's the first step. Softball and baseball could make the short list separately, then the union could come afterward,'' Fraccari said.
Porter made it clear that ''baseball has pursued us, we have not pursued baseball'' but that the joint effort has to be given consideration.
Softball reached its heyday following its inclusion in the 1996 Atlanta Games, and the sport spread to more than 120 countries even while the U.S. largely dominated for a decade.
The Americans won the first three Olympic softball gold medals before losing to Japan in the 2008 gold-medal game.
With no more Olympic softball in the foreseeable future, the sport has financial problems because countries aren't willing to provide funding at the same levels as they did when there was the potential for success on such a grand stage.
''It's not an easy solution from that standpoint, as to whether or not joining up with baseball will help us in that regard,'' Porter said. ''What would help us, certainly, is to get back in the Olympic program. But I think right now we've got to also start looking at other ways to do things as a sport.''
Porter said the ISF continues to seek more international events where softball can be played either in a single-sport tournament or as a part of multi-sport games, but that's only so effective when a country's softball federation may not be able to afford sending a team to compete.
That leaves him seeking sponsorships and other new sources of revenue to keep the sport running, or perhaps taking what once would have been considered an extreme move that isn't guaranteed to work.
But in the end, the rewards of getting back into the Olympics could override any of the sacrifices that would come to get there. It's up to Porter to figure out the best way to get his sport back on the biggest stage.
''The dilemma that Don has is that he can talk to 10 IOC members and five will tell him that it's not a bad idea to go with baseball,'' said Ron Radigonda, the executive director of the Amateur Softball Association of America, ''and the other five will say, 'Don't even come close to them because it's going to hurt you.'''
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AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf contributed to this report from Rome.
