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August 3, 2005

The sport seasons are disappearing

By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist


Things used to be so much simpler.

There were only a half-dozen or so television stations and just about the same number on your radio.

You got the news from the newspaper (there were both morning and evening editions) and from one of the TV news shows at 6 or 11. Baseball stats were only published in the Sunday papers. And there were no reality TV shows.

The sports seasons were a lot simpler, too. You played football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. Or, maybe, you swam in the winter and ran track in the spring.

Now, you play baseball in the fall, field hockey in the winter, soccer in the spring and basketball in the summer.

It’s great to have so many more options on the television and radio. And that you don’t have to wait until Sunday to find out who leads the league in home runs. But the sports seasons are another story.

You normally hear complaints about the overlapping seasons when a World Series game is played in 35-degree weather, when the Super Bowl is a few weeks before the start of the NCAA basketball tournament or the NHL or NBA playoffs extend nearly to baseball’s all star game.

But these are marketing decisions, largely made by television networks looking for the best opportunities to market the game and draw the largest audience.

Do you remember the days when you’d sneak a pocket transistor radio into school to listen to an afternoon World Series game? They don’t play them in the afternoon any more and that is more convenient. But is sure was fun, listening to the game and passing scores back and forth.

The seasons are changing in youth sports just as much. Kids miss Little League baseball games or high school golf matches to play for their traveling soccer team. Basketball players pass up basketball to lift weights for football. Champion caliber swimmers decide to run indoor track instead of swimming.

Every kid should have his or her choice when it comes to sports. And parents might be smart to encourage their son or daughter to participate in the sport where they seem to have the best skills. It also seems logical that an athlete improves faster the more he or she plays a particular sport.

But playing the same sport all year ‘round is not always the healthiest thing to do.

People Magazine recently reported about a 14-year old baseball player from Massachusetts who needed surgery on both elbows because of excessive pitching and hitting. A surgeon from Alabama performed 51 Tommy John surgeries on teenagers just last year. There were heel injuries on pre-teen gymnasts. And the great increase in injuries to the anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL) in teens.

Playing your sport all the time does give the athlete competitive experience. In theory, it strengthens the muscles needed to play that sport and helps the young athlete adjust to the pressures of competition.

But are today’s kids better off than those decades ago, when a dozen or so would just pick up sides for a baseball game with no umpires, no coaches and no pressures?

Next week we’ll pursue this issue further with a former star athlete who knows better than most about the physical pressures of playing your sport all the time.



Read more of Tom Williams' columns