"Those who bear most of the blame are the owners of the professional leagues who refuse to free up their ballplayers to compete," Cuban Baseball Federation President Carlos Rodriguez told The Associated Press.

Schiller promised the Beijing Games would be different.

"Hopefully we can gather up representatives of the best players," Schiller said. "To ask that entire teams turn over is asking too much. But I think we can have a good representation."

However, a series of high-profile doping cases including allegations against MLB home run king Barry Bonds last year may be hard to overcome.

"I'm pretty sure that the approach to drug use was ... one of the factors in the decision of the IOC not to include and then not to reconsider that decision," World Anti-doping Agency chief Dick Pound, who is also a prominent IOC member, said last year in Beijing.

Pound urged MLB to fight harder against doping transgressions in order to save the sport's reputation before it is too late.

After the threat of US Congressional intervention, American baseball owners stiffened their sanctions against steroids. These now include the threat of a 50-game suspension for a first offense, 100 games for a second offense, and a lifetime ban for a third.

"We need to make sure the sport is clean for all of our competitions," Schiller said. "I think we can work hand in hand with them (MLB) to ensure that the players who are part of the pool and (who are) selected comply with the WADA rules."

At the Beijing Olympics, eight teams will slug it out for what could be their last-ever chance of grabbing a gold medal in the sport.

Among them, Cuba is the undisputed king of the Games, having won three of the four gold medals available since baseball was first played at the Olympics. It won at Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Athens 2004. In Sydney it finished second to the US and settled for silver.

This year, the prospects of the US team will rely heavily on the stance taken by the MLB. The team did not even qualify for Athens 2004.

Asia has its best chance to date of putting in a good show as four of the teams in the competition hail from the region. Japan, the 2006 World Classic winner, and South Korea, which took bronze, are medal hopefuls.

China will also make its debut after automatically qualifying as the host nation but few fireworks are expected as the country ranks as a newcomer to the sport.

The Netherlands is the only participant from Europe, underlining the sport's uneven popularity in geographic terms.

Conspiracy theorists and many Americans point to this as a major reason why the sport failed to garner enough votes to be given an Olympic lifeline from the IOC, which is made up largely of European members.

(China Daily/The Olympian June 16, 2008)