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Dr. James Andrews: Let them play

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by HanSenSE, Jul 16, 2013.

  1. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    A kid who my oldest son plays football and baseball with is giving up football and focusing on baseball full-time. He's one of the better football players, but is by far the best baseball player in his age group in this area and his parents want him to be on the traveling teams so he doesn't have time for football or any other sport.

    He's 8.

    I'm so glad they didn't have traveling teams when I was growing up. Granted, my sport was always football and there's less of it with that than there is with baseball, basketball, soccer etc... but the whole notion of doing a sport year round at such a young age just seems ridiculous.

    As much as I loved football, I was usually more than ready for the season to be over. Then you play hoops for a few months, baseball for a few months and then you're rearing and ready to go for football season again. How do you not get burned out if you're doing a sport for the majority of the year?
     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    If you go back and look at it the way we look at things now, that was probably because of overuse more than the curveball itself.

    It's interesting that Andrews is now recommending against curveballs, because his group (ASMI) issued a study a few years ago that said pretty conclusively that curveballs were not a problem if thrown properly. And I realize he said in the interview that the "if thrown properly" rub is the reason he advises against it, but I think a lot of kids throw it the right way now with training and whatnot. So he is kind of on the other side of his own organization there.

    But the rest of it is spot-on. Our All-Star team went two-and-out this year, and the main reason is that our #1 pitcher -- who was also our cleanup hitter -- couldn't play because his shoulder was so messed up. Can't even throw overhand again until 2014. He's 10 years old.
     
  3. Hokie_pokie

    Hokie_pokie Well-Known Member

    One of my son's friends was the ace pitcher for his high school JV this spring as an 8th grader. The genius of a coach left him in to throw 125 or more pitches on three different occasions.

    The kid is 14 and a very good talent. Because he's also unfortunate enough to attend a marginal baseball school with a coach who's a fucking idiot, he'll also be lucky to be able to shake the principal's hand when he graduates from high school.

    As someone who has a massively torn labrum and ruined rotator cuff from too many pitches and breaking balls at a young age, I cringe every time I hear another story like that ... and there are a bunch of them.
     
  4. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    The 10-year-old I just mentioned who missed our all-star season -- his mom says the doctor told her about this project of mapping where pitchers and hitters come from, and although you are correct that a large share of the hitters come from warm-weather states, the percentage is decidedly lower about pitchers. What the doc said was that because those cold-weather kids are forced not to play baseball from November through March, their arms rest. I haven't found that data and I don't know if it's out there publicly, but it sure makes a lot of sense.

    Also, warm-weather states could be the top suppliers of baseball players because they're also the top suppliers of people, period.

    Believe me, if travel ball were outlawed tomorrow, I would throw a party. It bothers me quite a bit. But the one thing that can be said for it is that it is a tremendously efficient way of finding major-league talent. You don't have to guess anymore how a kid from the sticks of Oklahoma might do with a wood bat against the very best pitching. By the time he's 18, he has already done that.
     
  5. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    My son stopped playing baseball after little league and concentrated on club soccer year-round. This past March he stopped playing club, went out for freshman baseball (they only had 11 kids) and had an absolute blast, and decided to play summer ball. After some catching up hitting and throwing, he more than held his own with the team's better players and even was a very effective pitcher with a 65-MPH fastball he could spot and change up off of. Threw about two or three curve balls a game, no more.

    Now baseball's over and he'll return again to school soccer this August, with rested legs and a fresh attitude. The only bad thing is his higher level of school soccer now conflicts with football, so he can't placekick like he did last year.

    Too many kids miss out on school sports they'd have a blast in, make lasting friendships through, and have experiences they'll remember and savor for the rest of their lives, in favor of the drugery of off-season basketball, baseball, soccer, etc., chasing some scholarship that doesn't exist.

    Some of us baseball parents whose kids also play FB got an e-mail from the football coach chastizing people because not many players showed up for June weights, conditioning, etc. Our basic reaction was, GFY, it's baseball season.
     
  6. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    I understand your reaction to a point, but is your son not doing weight training for the fall? That would seem to be among the most basic requirements to be prepared for football -- for his own health as much as anything. Even in our day, when guys were doing another sport in the summer they always made time for football conditioning.

    Seems like high school has always been an acceptable time to go the specialty route or at least bring it down to one priority sport and one off-season cross-trainer. At least since I was in high school in the '80s.
     
  7. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    The odds of getting a scholarship are very slim anyways, and even if they do get one, frequently, it's only for a few thousand dollars.

    The New York Times had a series a few years ago about the competitiveness of scholarships, and how some athletes and their parents in the non-major sports (like swimming and track), devoted their entire lives to getting the scholarship, only to find out that they hardly would receive anything. Maybe $5K for a $40K bill.
     
  8. Rusty Shackleford

    Rusty Shackleford Active Member

    Yeah, if you're a parent pushing your kid into sports with dreams of a scholarship down the line, that seems like a shitty investment. Chances are, your kid won't be good enough to get one of the full-rides, and only if he's lucky will he even get a partial. You'd be better off playing in the local leagues, and banking the money you'd spend on travel sports to just pay for school. But a lot of parents are just as delusional as their kids, with the whole classroom full of boys claiming they're going to be major leaguers or rock stars, and don't realize how tremendously bad the odds of success are.
     
  9. BurnsWhenIPee

    BurnsWhenIPee Well-Known Member

    Saw a good story on the Des Moines Register site the other day, about a high school pitcher who threw 138 pitches in a game. Think it semi fits here because Andrews is a prominent source in the story.

    I liked how the coach rationalizes why it was OK for the kid to throw that many pitches - like an Iowa high school baseball coach has that deep an understanding of what's best for a young player's arm and health.

    http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130713/SPORTS/130713026/How-many-pitches-too-many-high-school-baseball-
     
  10. qtlaw

    qtlaw Well-Known Member

    That's awesome. I'm sure your son will grow up to be a much well-rounded man.

    My boy finished LL last year and was set to play baseball this spring when he decided to pursue the golf team at his middle school instead. I was sad to give up baseball but its been a blast playing golf with him and he's more passionate about golf than baseball.

    I don't think the specialization and intensity of the parents is about the scholarships or promise of lucrative professional contracts, its really a reflection of the parents having more free time and more disposable income to throw at their kids' activities while also living a bit vicariously through their kids' activities. Many parents I see and talk to bemoan the travel requirements but also enjoy the social aspects of it and allow that schedule to frame their family schedules. When I was growing up in the 70's, while we had eventual MLBers in our league and my team, no one had the $$ to spend on travel teams and year round tournaments.
     
  11. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Wow. Wow. I can honestly say that if that were my son pitching, I would walk out to the mound and take him out myself. Holy crap. And yeah, you do see that a lot -- all these coaches giving their medical opinions of what's going on as if they know more about the situation than Doctor James Fucking Andrews and Doctor Frank Fucking Jobe.

    We played a 10u tournament this weekend. Saturday a kid pitched against us, he threw two innings after throwing one in their previous game -- total of 50 or so pitches. Played the same team the next day and the kid goes five innings and 89 pitches. 10 years old. A major league manager who did that would be fired on the spot, and yet it happens with pre-teens on thousands of fields every weekend.
     
  12. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    He's a soccer player who placekicked/punted on game days only, but we were still on the football mailing list. Sorry if that wasn't clear. He will do lifting this winter, because he knows he needs it.

    But with school until mid-June, baseball, a part-time job and driver's ed, and trying to fit in a sweek of family vacation into a seven-week period before soccer practice starts in early August, he's busy enough.

    And obviously football in my neck of the woods isn't anywhere near as all-consuming as it is in some other places in the country.
     
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