New Boss for IBAF
Congratulations to Harvey Schiller as the new President of IBAF! He has a lot of work ahead of him and he is the man that can get it done. At the Extraordinary congress meeting held here Friday he set the tone after taking the oath by telling the federation representatives that one of the goals is to get the game back into the Olympics for 2016. It was good to see everyone rally around him.
Afterwords a few folks from MLB came over to the venue to take look at the progress we are making at the competition stadiums. Micheal Marone is the new MLB hire responsible for the China Office. He really helped me out this week as he speaks the Mandarin language fluently. Beside him is Mr Tao, BOCOG, Jim Small MLB Asian Boss, Mr. Chaun BOCOG operations, Paul Archey MLBI boss. As you can see there is no grass or field yet but the structure is coming out of the ground with steel girders so you have a good idea of the seating bowl. In true Olympic and Asian stadium fashion fans will sit about 8 feet above the field. There are only about 1500 permanent seats to the main stadium. The rest of the seating will be temporary as the venue is slated for demo after the Olympics. Hopefully we can come up with a way to change that plan. The land is very valuable as the stadium actually sits on the same street as the Tiananmen square which is about 20 minutes down the road.
MC
It is a shame they can’t keep up the diamond after the Olympics, just wondering what their reason for it is? Do they feel it wont be used enough after?
The location of the complex is on some very expensive real estate and the owner of the property plans to demo the fields. There is however some discussion about trying to keep one of the fields.. but its not a 100%. I feel confident the game will grow in china so we will have to see what happens after 2008