Players who are not on a major league club's 40-man roster will be allowed to play men's baseball in the 2015 Toronto Pan American Games, according to a report from FOX Sports' Jon Morosi. Morosi was told by his sources that Major League Baseball has decided to allow those minor leaguers to represent their respective countries if they are Canadian, American, Nicaraguan, Dominican, or Puerto Rican.
The Cuban national team has also qualified but they have not historically welcomed defectors to join the roster--although who knows what is possible with their relations with the United States thawing?
One more country from South America, most likely Venezuela, is seeking to qualify as the seventh team in the Games.
The games themselves will be played east of Toronto in the suburban town of Ajax, in the President's Choice Ajax Pan Am Ballpark, which will have four diamonds arranged in a pinwheel fashion plus a fifth field off to the side which will be built to International Baseball Federation standards. The venue will be accessible by shuttle bus, which will run between the ballpark and the Ajax GO Station. After the game be sure to leave right away because there is nothing around that area except for fields and subdivisions.
Men's and women's baseball will be played in Ajax from Saturday, July 11 through the last day of the Games on Sunday, July 26. Tickets for individual preliminary games are $20, tickets for medal games are $35 each, half price for youth under 16, and seniors 65 and over.
Team Canada won the gold medal in men's baseball in the 2011 Pan Am Games. Members of Team Canada in 2011 include former and current Blue JaysAndrew Albers, Michael Crouse, Shawn Hill, Marcus Knecht, and Scott Richmond.
Baseball was removed as a sport in the Olympics after the 2008 Beijing games because the people who run the Olympics are horrible.