HAVANA -- Trying to ensure baseball remains in the Olympics, International Baseball Federation president Aldo Notari will recommend his sport's competition be reduced from 12 to five days.

"One of the problems of baseball in the Olympics is that it is too long, that too many games are played,'' Notari said Friday. "It has to be cut. If we cut the game program in the Olympics, the big leagues can also think about giving their players permission for a week.''

Major league baseball players have not participated in the Olympics, although teams did supply minor league prospects for the 2000 tournament in Sydney, Australia.

In August, the International Olympics Committee program commission recommended that baseball, softball and modern pentathlon be dropped starting with the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The IOC executive committee is to decide at a meeting in Mexico City late this month whether to accept that recommendation.

Notari, in Cuba for the Intercontinental Baseball Cup that opened Friday night with a game between Cuba and the Netherlands, is to make his pitch to the IOC on Nov. 28.