Rethinking Spring
May 5, 2014
Those states that conduct high school softball in the fall of the year or conduct high school baseball during the summer months may be laughing at our attempts to force these summer games into the least hospitable season of all for school sports: spring.
After an extra-long winter, there has needed to be extra attention during early season baseball practices and games to assure that throwing arms have been brought gradually into condition for the rigors of a year that is likely to compress a full schedule of games into a shortened playing season.
While baseball pitchers continue to be protected during games by a rule that does not allow a student to pitch for two calendar days that follow the day when he pitched his 30th out, no other players are similarly restricted, nor are there any rules that apply to any players during practices, or to softball.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball recently reported an increase in elbow injuries among its players. Some commentators, both inside MLB and out, were quick to suggest that at least part of the blame is that pitchers are throwing harder than ever, doing so on a year-round basis, and starting at an earlier age.
It could be, then, that long winters are not such a bad thing, provided we’re patient when spring finally arrives, and use common sense for all players all season long, in both practices and games.
We look forward to the culmination of this year’s reluctant spring when the MHSAA hosts the Semifinals and Finals of both baseball and softball at a new venue, Michigan State University. Hope you’ll join us June 12-14.
It’s About the Base
May 8, 2018
Former Southeast Conference Commissioner Roy Kramer, whom Michiganders like to claim as our own for his East Lansing High School and Central Michigan University coaching roots, seized the opportunity of an acceptance speech for an award he received recently from the Tennessee Chapter of the National Football Foundation, College Football Hall of Fame and Knoxville Quarterback Club to deliver a sobering message regarding the game he loves so much – football.
His concerns were for the survival of football on college campuses “where their games will never be on television and will be played in front of less than 10,000 fans.” Which is the situation for 90 percent of the nation’s college football programs.
He also said, “I’m even more concerned about games on Friday night.” Mr. Kramer has been a long-time opponent of Friday night telecasts of college football games because they do poorly both at the gate and in television ratings, and they conflict with the tradition of approximately 6,000 high school football games played locally on Friday nights.
We Michiganders are sometimes criticized for our “conservative” views about the boundaries of a sensible scope for educational athletics. We come by this naturally, on the shoulders of people like Roy Kramer who, even after years in the glitz and glamour of elite college football, maintains his concern for more modest college programs as well as high school football.
It is this base of the game, not the few at the pinnacle, that is the future of a game under siege in dozens of courthouses and state houses across the U.S. – and worse, a game being questioned in many thousands of homes where football was once the game of choice.