{"id":19260,"date":"2012-12-17T16:54:13","date_gmt":"2012-12-18T00:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=19260"},"modified":"2012-12-17T16:55:43","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T00:55:43","slug":"new-zealand-softball-boss-not-worried-by-merger-with-baseball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/?p=19260","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand Softball boss not worried by merger with baseball"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>From RadioLIVE\/3 News<\/em><figure id=\"attachment_16361\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-16361\" style=\"width: 161px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.3news.co.nz\/Softball-boss-not-worried-by-merger-with-baseball\/tabid\/415\/articleID\/280799\/Default.aspx\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/3news-logo.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"3news-logo\" width=\"161\" height=\"112\" class=\"size-full wp-image-16361\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-16361\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Click to read the complete story and photo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>Softball New Zealand has no fears about being swallowed up by baseball when the two sporting bodies combine at international level.<\/p>\n<p>The sports have combined to form the World Baseball-Softball Confederation to try and gain inclusion in the 2020 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n<p>The merger is no threat to New Zealand Softball says General Manager Dane Dougan.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"pullquote\">\u201cIt\u2019s purely for an Olympic bid so if the baseball-softball combination doesn\u2019t get into the Olympics, my understanding is this will all be reconsidered in terms of the merger,\u201d<\/span> says Dougan. \u201cBasically the merger is purely for an Olympic bid at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dougan is also confident softball will remain New Zealand\u2019s preferred discipline.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got to put things into perspective a little bit,\u201d says Dougan, \u201cWe\u2019ve got 30,000 players playing softball in this country with two-thirds of them male, so we actually have a fairly attractive product.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The merger won&#8217;t have any affect on the Softball World Champs being held in New Zealand in March next year.<br \/>\n<em>RadioLIVE\/3 News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From RadioLIVE\/3 NewsSoftball New Zealand has no fears about being swallowed up by baseball when the two sporting bodies combine at international level. The sports have combined to form the World Baseball-Softball Confederation to try and gain inclusion in the 2020 Olympic Games. The merger is no threat to New Zealand Softball says General Manager [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-isf","8":"category-oceania","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19260"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19264,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19260\/revisions\/19264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fastpitchwest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}