\n<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, the WBC is great, but it\u2019s not the Olympics,\u201d Harper said Friday in Houston, where he\u2019s playing for Team USA in the WBC. \u201cThat\u2019s no disrespect to the WBC or anything. But everybody knows when the Olympics are on, everybody is watching. Doesn\u2019t 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. \u201928 happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred believes it will.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a lot closer to there than we were the last time we talked about it,\u201d Manfred said last month after the league\u2019s owners meetings. \u201cThere\u2019s 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got a lot of players interested in doing it, and I feel pretty good about the idea we\u2019ll get there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bruce Meyer, the head of the players\u2019 union, confirmed Saturday that active discussions are underway.<\/p>\n
Scheduling is near the top of the docket<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The league and the players can probably accommodate the Olympics without moving the All-Star Game\u2019s typical Tuesday date. Trying to reschedule it would affect another stakeholder, Fox, which televises the game.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Giants haven\u2019t hosted an All-Star Game since 2007. A formal bidding process has to unfold before a host is finalized.<\/p>\n MLB players need insurance<\/a> 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\u2019t wager their salaries to participate.<\/p>\n But insurance brought hand-wringing to the WBC, where star players were turned away because the policy wouldn\u2019t cover them \u2014 a problem that could only wind up magnified for the Olympics.<\/p>\n The insurance issues are unique to MLB, where players receive higher salaries than their counterparts in other top baseball leagues. Japan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom an ownership standpoint, I totally get it,\u201d Harper said. \u201cAs players and owners, we have to come to an agreement that works for everybody \u2026 understanding that you can get hurt playing during the regular season, you can get hurt playing during the Olympics.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I think if you look at it in a hockey way, then you see that. Sidney Crosby got hurt and he wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there\u2019s nothing like representing your country.\u201d<\/p>\n For insurance and all other costs, the league and union need to figure out which party \u2014 the league, the union or the Olympics\u2019 organizing committee \u2014 foots the bill.<\/p>\n In that vein, accommodations will be part of the discussion. Will MLB players be comfortable staying in the Olympic Village?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n MLB has not previously sent a contingent to the Olympics.<\/p>\n The National Hockey League, however, has often sent its players to the winter games, and if hockey\u2019s negotiation process is any indication, baseball\u2019s could last into 2027.<\/p>\n The NHL and its players\u2019 union announced an agreement<\/a> for the 2026 Winter Olympics in July of 2025, less than a year<\/a> before the competition was to begin.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 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,\u201d Harper said. \u201cIt would be great for baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years ago, Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive and the head of the 2028 L.A. games\u2019 organizing effort, met with MLB owners<\/a> to discuss the potential of bringing big leaguers to the games.<\/p>\n Wasserman\u2019s future leading LA28 is in limbo<\/a>, however, following the Department of Justice\u2019s 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\u2019s name appeared in the documents. He has said he had no contact with Epstein in 20 years.<\/p>\n Asked last month if he was concerned that an association with Epstein would be detrimental to baseball, Manfred said he didn\u2019t \u201clike to answer hypothetical questions.\u201d Manfred then said MLB\u2019s efforts to attend the Olympics do not depend on Wasserman.<\/p>\n \u201cLook, our dealings are not with Casey,\u201d Manfred said. \u201cOur dealings are with the institution of the Olympics.\u201d\n<\/p><\/div>\n 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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Bryce-Harper-wants-MLB-players-in-2028-Olympics-Could-it.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23364,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23362\/revisions\/23364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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