Joe Ryan remembers watching Olympic swimmer Caeleb Dressel throwing a football around outside. During a conversation with skateboarder Nyjah Huston, he discovered the medalist skated at a park right behind his house in California. He had a chance to chat with basketball stars Kevin Durant and Pau Gasol, who came over to talk while he was eating a meal one day.

Ryan cherishes the pins he swapped with athletes from different countries and looks back at the opportunity to compete in the Olympics fondly.

There are only a couple things he wishes had been different about his experience in Tokyo in 2021. Because of pandemic restrictions, he was unable to attend other sporting events, which meant he couldn’t watch his high school water polo teammate Dylan Woodhead compete. And, well, he’s still upset about the color of his medal.

“I hate that it’s silver,” Ryan said of the medal, which he gave to his mother after returning from Japan. “It’s just we were so close. … That’s why I really want to go back and win that, too.”

The 2024 Summer Olympics, which are currently taking place in Paris, do not feature baseball and softball, as the 2020 games (which were contested in 2021) did. But the two sports will be back in 2028 when the Olympics take place in Los Angeles, and count Ryan and Simeon Woods Richardson, who was also a member of that Olympic team, among those who are hoping to see MLB players allowed to participate.

It’s a logistical challenge seeing as the Olympics fall in the middle of the season, but it’s an idea that has been gaining traction. MLB players have never competed at the Olympics before. But the NHL, for example, has paused its season in the past to allow for its athletes to compete for their home countries.

MLB owners heard a presentation about the prospect of it from agent Casey Wasserman, the Chairman of LA 2028, earlier this year and Commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters last month at the All-Star Game that he was “open-minded on the topic.”

Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Tony Clark told reporters last month that the feedback they had gotten from players “is such that there is an interest in participating if given an opportunity.”

“I think there’s a way to get it done,” Ryan said. “It’s cool to see how much the Japanese put into those games, bringing their all-star team there. I think it would be cool for the U.S. to do a similar thing and obviously the (World Baseball Classic) was such a big success and I think it could just show out even bigger in the Olympics. … I think it would be really cool just to have the world stage.”

How, exactly, it would work hasn’t exactly been fleshed out yet.

It seems unlikely that MLB teams would play fewer games to accommodate the Olympics, which could mean stretching out the season. But the Olympics would fall around the time of the All-Star break, which could help with scheduling to some extent.

“I doubt we’re playing fewer games in order to make it happen, so elongating the season out even longer than it is would probably be something that the players taking part in the Olympics would be excited about, because I assume you’re going to be excited if you’re in the Olympics, and everybody else that’s taking part would probably not enjoy that idea very much at all,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said.

It’s an idea that seems to be popular among some of the sport’s biggest stars, with Bryce Harper, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge among those talking positively about the prospect.

At the time Ryan and Woods Richardson competed, the Team USA roster was primarily made up of former major leaguers and minor leaguers.

Ryan was at Triple-A with the Tampa Bay Rays when the idea was first presented to him. Asked if he wanted to go to the trials, he said absolutely. Then warned that he might miss an opportunity to be called up and debut, Ryan went ahead with his plan to compete in the Olympics, where he started two games and gave up two runs in 10 1/3 innings pitched (1.74 ERA).

“I was like, ‘If it’s three weeks or a month or whatever difference and I don’t ever get to play in the big leagues, but I get to play in the Olympics, I’m going to take the Olympics over that,’” Ryan said. “Luckily, it didn’t turn out that way. But, yeah, I mean it was just such an amazing experience.”

Both Ryan and Woods Richardson, who were roommates during the qualifiers, ended up being traded over to the Twins while they were in Tokyo. Woods Richardson didn’t actually compete in the tournament, but the experience clearly made an impression — he now has the Olympic rings tattooed on his right wrist.

He has vivid memories of sampling other country’s foods at the dining hall and talking with other athletes as they participated in the opening ceremony.

“It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.

Four years from now, perhaps other Major League Baseball players will have that opportunity as well.

“There’s nothing bigger than the Olympics. I love the Olympics and I think for many people throughout the world, this is like the highlight of the sporting world all coming together,” Baldelli said. “It would be an amazing thing if there was an actual way to do it. I do think it would be challenging, though.”

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