PORTER JUST KEPT PUSHING : CONVINCING IOC TO ADD SOFTBALL TO OLYMPICS WAS NOT EASY.

Byline: Kevin Acee Daily News Staff Writer

A kids' prank helped Don Porter get softball into the Olympics.

At every Olympiad from 1968 to 1988, Porter would go to the elevator in a hotel where members of the International Olympic Committee were staying.

There, he would get in, push all the buttons and ride the elevator bottom to top and back again until someone from the IOC got on and he could schmooze.

``You butter them up by talking about their sport,'' said Porter, for 33 years the executive director of the Amateur Softball Association (USA Softball) and, since 1987, president of the International Softball Federation. ``I had to learn about all the different sports.''

A former NFL referee and a graduate of San Fernando High School, the 65-year-old Porter will see his dream realized when the United States plays Puerto Rico on July 21 in the first-ever Olympic softball game.

``It's been his life,'' said Bill Smith, ASA commissioner in Nebraska and, himself, one of the sport's pioneers. ``Don has worked for 20 years or more with that goal in mind. Others have tried to assist him. But to Don this has been a goal and an objective he's had for many many years.''

With apologies to those who have played supporting roles, ASA administrator Bill Plummer, put it this way:

``Don Porter is solely responsible for softball being an Olympic sport.''

At Mexico City in 1968, then-IOC president Avery Brundage was not exactly receptive to Porter's original overtures. But what he told Porter proved prophetic.

``Young man,'' Brundage said to Porter, ``it's a difficult task to get a sport into the Olympics. It's going to take a lot of patience and a lot of perseverance.''

Porter now says, ``That is exactly what it took.''

He is not unconvinced the IOC made softball an Olympic sport because they were tired of him pestering them.

``You have to wear them down,'' he said.

And you have to be tireless. Even in the face of something debilitating.

Like cancer.

After returning from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Porter went to the doctor for an unrelated matter and it was discovered he had a tumor in his throat. He underwent chemotherapy for a year. In 1990, the disease went into remission.

Porter never went into remission.

``He was extremely ill,'' Smith said. ``Some of us got a little angry at times. He kept coming into work.''

Porter had worked too hard to quit before it was finished.

``I was trying to keep myself busy,'' he said. ``I wanted to survive to see this all come to pass.''

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