The Limitation of Rules – Part 1
September 2, 2016
From the age of 10 to 20, my position as a baseball player was catcher. Sometime during that decade I was taught to return the ball to the pitcher with authority, with a snap throw from my ear, targeting the glove-side shoulder of the pitcher.
I caught every inning of every game, including doubleheaders. In those years, there was less concern than today for protecting the arms of pitchers, and there was no thought given to the throwing arms of catchers.
Today, the shoulder of my throwing arm is shot; I cannot throw a ball overhand with any force.
But here’s the thing. I didn’t ruin my throwing arm in youth and school baseball; I wrecked it as an adult doing silly things with a tennis ball on the beach with my teenage son. We had a blast for a summer afternoon, and I’ve paid for it the rest of my life.
The point of this brief baseball bio is to demonstrate an example of the limitations of rules.
We can identify dozens of risks to student-athletes and we can promulgate an equal number of rules to help them avoid injuries in our programs; but we cannot protect them against a lack of common sense in our programs or accidents in other aspects of their lives.
Even if we implement new rules to limit the number of pitches by a player, what good is that if, after reaching the limit, the pitcher and catcher switch positions? Do we need a rule to address that coaching decision too?
Do we need rules that prohibit large students from practicing against small, or experienced players from competing against inexperienced? How would we ever monitor or enforce such rules? Where do rules leave off and common sense take over?
Even if we put players in bubble wrap for sports, what do we do about their decisions away from sports, perhaps in vehicles, with their friends and their cell phones? Where do laws and rules stop, and personal responsibility start?
Soccer Head Games
September 1, 2015
Recently, people who do have the credentials that I apparently lack have given credibility to my concerns, including a host of former World Cup champions led by Brandi Chastain, who are supporting Safer Soccer which says banning heading for participants under 14 years old (especially females) is a “no brainer.”
Launched in 2014 by Sports Legacy Institute and the Santa Clara University Institute of Sports Law and Ethics, the goal of Safer Soccer is to educate the soccer community that delaying heading until age 14 or high school “would eliminate the No. 1 cause of concussions in middle school soccer and is in the best interest of youth soccer players.”
The danger is both in the head-to-ball contact and the head-to-head contact by two players competing to head the ball.
There are legitimate differences of opinion on this topic, as well as absurd claims of some that this campaign is intended to give back the hard-fought gains of women in sports, and equally bizarre blather of others that this is intended to keep the sport of soccer in a place of secondary profile in the U.S. If we can get past that nonsense, perhaps then we can have an adult debate about children’s health.