When the summer of 2016 rolls around, I don’t think we’ll be firing up our hovercrafts, boarding the bullet train or traversing a 12 lane expressway and heading to Chicago to watch the Olympics.

Last week’s decision by the International Olympic Committee to essentially keep baseball and softball out of the Games is nothing but bad news for Chicago’s bid to land the event.

The IOC will reveal the 2016 winner on Oct. 2.

I hope I’m wrong but the IOC is going to select either Rio de Janeiro, Madrid or Tokyo and leave Chicago on the bench.

I can’t believe the IOC would bar two American-made institutions from the 2016 Games and then turn around and award those Games to America’s third-largest city where both those sports are wildly popular.

It’s a shame, too.

Baseball and softball would have been good fits in Chicago, particularly baseball, which has been played there since the days of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow.

I am sure Wrigley Field and U.S. Cellular Field could have easily accommodated the entire tournament. If more venues were needed for preliminary action, games could have been played in any number of parks in the area. Heck, by that time, the 8,000-seat home of the Northern League’s Lake County Fielders in Zion, Ill., would be more than ready to host an event like that.

What a rotten time for the Olympic Committee to turn its back on baseball, too. If this were 1984 or 1988, I could understand it. But with the increasing worldwide popularity of the sport and the arriving parity (remember when the Netherlands beat the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic?), there is no better time to embrace this sport.

One school of thought is that the IOC was worried about the Major League season conflicting with the Olympics and preventing the top players from participating.

So what? The United States has won two Gold Medals, one Silver and one Bronze using amateurs or minor leaguers since the Olympics started offering the sport in 1984.

The denial of softball could be seen as a harsh blow to the overall viability of that sport in this country. Baseball will always have the Major Leagues to carry it in America. Like gymnastics, swimming and track and field, softball needs the Olympics to cement it in the American consciousness.

Who knows what a Nadia- or Phelps-like presence in softball could have done for that sport here? In recent years, women’s soccer has used high-profile international play to launch a professional league in this country thus giving those athletes in “minor” or “non-revenue” sports a chance to continue their careers.

Maybe it’s for the best.

Call me the ugly American but Rio de Janeiro, Madrid or Tokyo can have the 2016 Games and its rugby, handball, water polo and the like.

I’ll spend that summer like I have spent every other summer: following our national pastime.

David Marran is Sports Editor of the News. Contact him at dmarran@kenoshanews.com