The Black Sox team management and Bike NZ have stuck to their selection criteria and said sayonara to their stars.
Although the sports are very different, the dilemma is the same.
In one context, the team management of softball's iconic team, the Black Sox, have tried to play hardball by insisting baseball was out of bounds for their players.
To date, Brad and Pita Rona and Ben Enoka have been "caught" playing the banned game and were forced to choose which diamond sport appealed to them most.
So far they've chosen baseball.
According to talkback gossip, there are at least nine members of the current Black Sox squad who have played baseball since Doug Golightly's email warning against such a thing.
Is Softball NZ at risk of losing all of its players to the richer diamond game with this hard-nosed approach?In the cycling saga, two-time medallist Hayden Roulston has been left out of the New Zealand Olympic team. Apparently, he didn't meet the selection criteria either.
But there is more to these sagas than meets the eye. There is the "threat" of other sports or priorities interfering in the team preparation, player performance and survival of the sport.
Bike NZ can afford to be so dismissive of a past Olympic medallist because of the depth of talent coming through the ranks.
Does Softball NZ have the same luxury? I'd suggest it is not so fortunate in terms of the depth of talent, which is why the threat of baseball is so serious.
It doesn't look great when management is fuzzy on its policies, so it is no wonder players have taken advantage of this confusion. Softball NZ and the Black Sox management need to call time out and sort out where they stand on this selection issue before they have a mass exodus of softball players to baseball.
Which relates to the second issue: are these dilemmas really about meeting selection criteria or are the powers at be forcing athletes to be monogamous in their sporting endeavours?
Golightly and his fellow officials appear to be worried about baseball ravaging their talent pool leading up to the softball world series hosted by New Zealand in 2013.
Apparently there are also clashes between the two sports leading up to critical training camps and tournaments.
Roulston was also unavailable for some of the lead-up events for the London Olympics because of his professional road team commitments.
Is it possible for elite athletes these days to have their cake and eat it too? Can they, as Golightly suggests. "put a buck both ways" and pursue representative opportunities in more than one sport?
I genuinely feel for Roulston, who perhaps thought he was a shoo-in for the Olympics based on his past performance, but it looks like the chasing pack have caught up to him performance-wise, and he needed to reassess his priorities and take a break from road racing if he truly wanted to add to his Olympic medal haul.
As for the "swing both ways" ball players, my support goes the way of the coaches. Softball is an amateur sport and baseball is a serious threat to their survival.
How can leading players be seen playing a rival sport? It would be like watching some of the All Blacks playing rugby league leading up to this year's tournament.
Of course there are always exceptions and boxing wannabe Sonny Bill Williams is one of them. Are the father-son Rona combination and Ben Enoka the SBW version of softball? I doubt it.
Unfortunately for Black Sox bosses, they can't afford to be too hard-nosed about this (especially when Softball NZ doesn't even back them up) so they may need to reconsider how their uneasy relationship with baseball is going to develop.
Should they adopt a "three strikes and you're out" policy with regards to playing baseball? Or perhaps the restrictions should be to a certain level and as long as it doesn't conflict with scheduled training camps and softball tournaments?
One point I hadn't considered was how different the swing techniques were between softball and baseball.
Roulston's road racing may also have played a part in his lack of speed around the track.
Performance-wise, it makes perfect sense to force commitment from athletes.
Unfortunately these days, athletes tend to have their cake and eat it too. So, sporting organisations need to make sure their cake is more appealing and tastier by whatever means possible.
