A Pitcher’s Prescription
August 3, 2015
One of our community’s local heroes who has really lived up to his hype is John Smoltz, a three-sport standout in high school who was recently inducted into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
Michigan’s climate and Smoltz’s passion for other sports than baseball kept him from throwing so much, so early and so often that he was able to bring a lively arm into the major leagues. Nevertheless, he needed “Tommy John” surgery to repair damage to his arm, like an increasing number of baseball pitchers today.
Smoltz, who had his surgery in 2000, told USA Today recently: “We’ve asked kids to do too much, too early, and at a high velocity at a young age, and you’re just not able to handle that over time. It’s like RPM-ing your car. If you redline it enough, you’re going to blow your engine.”
The new Hall of Famer is using this high-profile platform to ask parents to stop their kids from playing year-round baseball. Like famed orthopedist James Andrews, Smoltz is recommending players take a vacation from baseball for two to four months every year.
So, those non-school fall baseball leagues we’re now seeing crop up for high school age players? After a spring and summer of ball, most high school players probably need a rest from baseball and would benefit much more from playing a school-sponsored sport in the autumn: cross country, football, soccer, tennis.
Developing skills in other sports and camaraderie with other students is a healthier prescription than year-round baseball.
Students of Rules
November 12, 2013
Those who make rules ought to be students of rules. We mean this in at least the two ways this posting and the next will address.
First, rule makers should know the essence of the existing body of rules which they will be responsible for upholding or modifying during the necessary ongoing review of those rules. These rule makers should have a general awareness of when and why each rule was first adopted, how it might have evolved, how it is now applied and what the major compliance problems have been in the past or may be in the future.
This first requirement is as important for those who prepare the rules for the contests – the playing rules – as for those who promulgate the rules that establish the minimum eligibility standards and the maximum limits for competition. In the face of any proposal to eliminate or greatly modify any rule, rule makers must ask what problems may return if they remove the rule that solved those problems.
Dov Seidman writes in how: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything: “Rules, of course, don’t come out of thin air. Legislatures and organizations adopt them usually to proscribe unwanted behaviors but typically in reaction to events. They lower speed limits after automobile accidents become too frequent, regulate pit bulls after a series of dog bites, or institute new expense-tracking procedures after someone is caught trying to get reimbursed for their new iPod. Rules have been established for a reason, but most people are out of touch with the rationale and spirit of why. They don’t read legislative histories and so have a thin, superficial relationship to the rules . . .”
That is not acceptable for those who write, review and revise rules. They have to know where each rule has come from. This is why for the rule makers and for those in our member schools responsible for applying the rules day in and day out, the MHSAA keeps current “The The History, Rationale and Application of the Essential Eligibility Regulations High School Athletics in Michigan."