All well and good, and certainly players in a skill sport like baseball benefit from year-round drills and instruction on the building blocks of the game.  But, at the same time one could certainly ask the question “at what point in the life of young athlete should he or she begin to focus on just one sport?”  When baseball — or football or basketball or soccer, for that matter — becomes a year-round activity, the opportunities for a young athlete to participate in other sports diminish.  What is lost when that happens?

After talking to seventeen multi-sport athletes, their coaches and athletic directors this fall for our series on baseball-playing quarterbacks, my understanding of the benefits and challenges of multi-sport participation has been broadened.  Here are a few of the things I’ve learned:

1.  The multi-sport athlete benefits from competing in a variety of different situations.  Many of the athletes I talked to spoke of being able to transfer what they’ve learned from one sport to another.  Whether it’s a physical quality, such as strength or agility, or a mental attribute, such as the ability to focus and concentrate, there seem to be some core components that are common to all sports.  Developing those core components under fire in varying competitive situations seems to give the athlete greater confidence in his ability to compete and succeed in each of the sports in which he participates.

2.  The training for some sports emphasize certain of these core athletic components more than others.  Football emphasizes aggressiveness, one-on-one challenges, strength, speed, bursts of quickness and power.  Basketball emphasizes footwork, vision, leaping ability, aerobic conditioning, coordination, quick decision-making and precision.  Baseball emphasizes hand-eye coordination, arm strength, lateral movement, timing, precise repetitive motions, speed and quickness.  Likewise, sports such as wrestling, swimming and diving, soccer, tennis and golf each develop a unique collection of core athletic components.  When an athlete brings a broader range of well-developed athletic abilities to a particular sport, he has a “deeper well” to draw from.  He has more unique abilities to contribute to his team.  A team composed of individuals with a broad base of athletic experiences and abilities is going to able to respond better under adverse or novel circumstances since the players collectively have a broader range of experiences to draw from.

3.   Coaches and athletic directors have gotten the message that opportunities for athletes to play multiple sports must be encouraged and facilitated.  Top players can no longer be “hoarded” by a particular coach who wants those kids exclusively for his program.  In order for all of the teams from a school to be successful, coaches must share athletes and cooperate with one another.   Athletic directors, it appears, have become very proactive in promoting the kind of cooperation and coordination among their coaches that makes it possible for multi-sport athletes to avoid conflicting demands from coaches.

4.  Baseball is attracting the top multi-sport athletes in many schools.  That’s very good news for our sport.  As a sport, Nebraska high school baseball is better off if we have the state’s top athletes among our ranks rather than having them competing in track or soccer.  The signs are very encouraging so far, but we lag far behind in attracting African-American athletes to our sport.  Of the seventeen baseball-playing quarterbacks we interviewed, only one was an African-American.  Of course, this problem is not unique to Nebraska high school baseball, but is a major challenge for the sport of baseball at all levels, including Major League Baseball. 

At the end of the day, not every kid who has good baseball skills is going to have the athletic ability to compete at the varsity level in multiple sports.  Baseball is a skill game, and kids who may not stand out in terms of their overall athletic ability may still be successful ballplayers if given the opportunities to develop those skills through good teaching and persistent effort.  For those kids, year-round baseball opportunities may provide the key to a successful career at the high school level and beyond.  But we should also encourage and provide opportunities for the talented, multi-sport athlete to do what he or she does best — compete year round in a variety of sports to maximize his or her athletic potential. 

If we can put together a baseball team of both kinds of players — the skilled baseball player and the naturally-gifted, multi-sport athlete — then perhaps we have the best of all possible worlds for Nebraska high school baseball.

Many of our readers are just now, or soon will be, discovering this reality as the Class of 2009 heads off to college or whatever else awaits them after high school.  Although we parents might jokingly say, “allright! I’ll no longer have to pick up his messes” or “our grocery bill will probably be cut in half,” or “finally, I can spend more time doing [fill in the blank with some long-awaited activity that you put off while going to hundreds of baseball games],” the hard reality is that we really love the little buggers, and we miss them terribly.

Parenting consists of holding our children close while, at the same time, letting them go.  Sending them off to college is not unlike watching them take their first steps, pedal a bicycle for the first time, learning to drive — each a form of letting go, letting them become their own person.  Each is a bittersweet moment for a parent, filled with pride and joy yet tinged with a bit of sadness. 

Many years ago, I discovered a middle eastern poet named Khalil Gibran whose work, “The Prophet,”  intrigued me.  His thoughts about parenting are both challenging and comforting.  I include them below for the parents of the Class of 2009. 

ON CHILDREN

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Stay tuned for more on this topic.

Although the full extent of the arm injury epidemic may not be known, enough is known to be able to safely say that this a growing problem in need of solutions.  Serious arm injuries such as ulnar collateral ligament tears (elbow) and labral lesions (shoulder) can have catastrophic consequences for a young ballplayer — potentially depriving him of the opportunity to pursue his dreams at this level and beyond.  The real tragedy is that the vast majority of these injuries are preventable.  The time has come to make prevention priority one.

What would a comprehensive throwing arm injury prevention program for Nebraska high school baseball look like?  Here are some thoughts:

1.  Education.  The first order of business is for coaches, players and parents to educate themselves about how these injuries occur and how they can be prevented.  Coaches are educators.  Therefore, it makes sense for coaches to fully inform themselves about the problem and to use their skills as professional educators to TEACH their players how to avoid arm injuries.  But it can’t all be put on the coach.  Players and parents need to take responsibility for the health of the throwing arms in the family by learning as much as they can about sound arm care practices.  Valuable learning resources can be found on the internet as well as among local professionals such as surgeons and physical therapists.  The medical professionals in this area that we have talked to are very “prevention-oriented” and are more than willing to provide prescriptions for injury avoidance.  Applying the old adage that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” it only makes sense to seek professional guidance before problems occur rather than after.

Educational activities can also involve group meetings of parents, players and coaches led by a physical therapist, orthopedic surgeon or other medical professionals who can outline prevention strategies and routines, injury identification and what to do when symptoms arise.

2.  Preventative Exercises.   Pre-season conditioning for throwers needs to include exercises specifically designed to strengthen key areas of the throwing arm that are vulnerable to injury, according to Metro area physical therapist Jerry Jacobi.  For example, a conscientiously followed regimen of a few brief resistance exercises can build the rotator cuff muscles that stabilize the shoulder.  Doing these exercises three or four times per week prior to the season and continuing them throughout the season can have tremendous benefits for shoulder injury prevention, according to Jacobi, an arm care specialist who has worked with many pitchers in the Metro area.

Skutt coach Shawn Exner is to be commended for instituting an arm strengthening program at Skutt, using a system called “Crossover Symmetry.”    The key, according to Mr. Jacobi, is that players “actually do the exercises.”  Integrating the arm strengthening exercises into the team’s daily warm up routine is a positive step — since many young players seem to lack the self-discipline to implement a sustained individual routine. 

3.  Avoiding Overuse.  A study conducted by noted orthopedic surgeon James Andrews identified “overuse” as the number one risk factor for ulnar collateral ligament (elbow) injuries.  Types of overuse can include year round throwing (less than two months of full rest from throwing each year), ”seasonal overuse” (routinely violating recommendations for maximum pitch counts or minimum rest - see chart below), and “event overuse” (short episodes of extreme overuse in which commonsense guidelines are grossly violated).  Other risk factors included throwing breaking balls before age 14, having inadequate warm ups before pitching in a game and throwing a fastball in excess of 80 mph.  

Andrews’ study was conducted by interviewing high school pitchers following “Tommy John” surgery to repair UCL injuries.  He observed that many of his patients were playing competitive baseball eight or more months per year, were “top” pitchers who were routinely called upon by their coaches to throw a high pitch count to get the “big win,” often extended their throwing into the off-season in order to go to showcases and camps and whose parents often were tempted to allow overuse in pursuit of the goal of gaining the attention of college coaches, recruiters and scouts.  Sound like anyone you know? 

To curb the tendency towards overuse, Dr. Andrews published the following guidelines in his study for recommended maximum number of pitches and recommended rest days:

The governing body for Nebraska high school sports, the Nebraska School Activities Association, includes the following pitching limitations in its Baseball Manual: 

1. Twenty-six homegrown Nebraska ballplayers filled the 2008 rosters of the two NCAA Division I baseball programs in the state, the University of Nebraska and Creighton University, including key players such as Johnny Dorn, Jake Mort, Erik Bird, Zach Herr, Pat Venditte, Darin Ruf, Steve Winkelmann and Joe Servais;

2. More than 100 members of the Nebraska high school baseball Class of 2008 were recruited to play college baseball, including nine at the NCAA Division I level;

3. Recent Nebraska high school ballplayers include the #2 overall MLB draft pick, Alex Gordon, Yankees’ starter Joba Chamberlain, ambidextrous phenom Venditte - currently in the Yankee’s minor league system, and fourteen selections in the 2008 First Year draft, including Conor Gillaspie (#37 overall) and 2008 grads Jake Kuebler and Kash Kalkowski;

4. The NP Dodge Wildcats, Nebraska’s 2008 Class A American Legion state champs, obliterated the state champions from the states of South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri (twice) and Iowa by a combined score of 66-14 in Regional Tournament action before falling to eventual national champion, Nevada, 7-5, in the eight-team American Legion World Series;

5. Brandon Bass of the NP Dodge Wildcats earned the Louisville Slugger Award as the American Legion player compiling the highest batting average in 2008 national American Legion competition (.576) — the highest in the past ten years and the sixth highest all-time in the sixty-three year history of the award. The Wildcats had three of the top four hitters in 2008 American Legion national competition and four of the top seven; and

6. The number of high school baseball teams playing spring baseball under the NSAA has grown 19% in the past three years.

I probably overlooked a few notable achievements in quickly compiling this short list, but I think it gives you the general idea: high school baseball is alive and well here in cornhead country, thank you very much.

And now, just when things are going great, along comes an NSAA proposal to fix something that ain’t broke. Beatrice High School Athletic Director Neal Randel has proposed that a seventeen “date” cap be imposed on baseball “to level the playing field.” See Article. Although every school currently has the right to determine how many baseball games it should play, evidently Mr. Randel thinks schools that choose to play more games than he and his coaches care to play have an unfair advantage (this despite the fact that Mr. Randel is unable to tell us whether playing more games — as opposed to spending more time practicing — is what makes a team better).

Mr. Randel’s colleague at Platteview High School, Athletic Director Tim McNamara, offered up what may very well be the “real” rationale behind Mr. Randel’s proposal — that schools outside of the Metro feel disadvantaged by the number of year-round practice opportunities available to Metro ballplayers. Therefore, according to this logic, since players can practice year-round, they are not disadvantaged by bypassing a few “in season” practice dates to play more games. Thus, unlimited freedom to choose “more games” over “more practice” plays into the hands of Metro teams who enjoy a wealth of off-season practice opportunities not available elsewhere across the state. It’s that dang ol’ “rich just keep getting richer” thing again — we just need to tax the bastards and spread the wealth.

Unfortunately, rather than looking for ways to improve the quality of his program — whether by encouraging boosters and businessmen in Beatrice to investigate the development of off-season baseball facilities or otherwise– it appears that Mr. Randel’s solution is to level the playing field by dragging the top programs downward, what could be called “dumbing down” the sport of high school baseball. Evidently, in Mr. Randel’s view of the world, rather than having a handful of truly excellent programs setting the bar high for others to aspire to, it is better to achieve parity through mediocrity.

My hunch is that at the end of the day — if Mr. Randel’s proposal is adopted and put into action — it’s not going to have any effect whatsoever on the success of his program relative to others. If Millard West, Westside, Creighton Prep, Skutt, Elkhorn, Roncalli or Gross would kick the snot out of Beatrice during a thirty-five game season, they’re probably just as likely to do so during a twenty-five game season or a fifteen game season. Why? Because the kids who attend Metro and Lincoln schools are coming into high school baseball with skill development beyond that of kids in other parts of the state. The select baseball machines in the Metro and Lincoln are cranking out ballplayers who have a headstart on becoming highly successful high school ballplayers — and lots of them. (Oops, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this — next we’ll have an NSAA proposal to outlaw select teams.)

Heck, if anyone should be complaining, it should be the OPS schools who have all of this baseball talent so tantalizingly close — yet have a hard time recruiting top youth baseball players from the suburbs to their schools. Do any OPS coaches really believe that playing fewer games and practicing more will help them defeat the top Metro teams? Are any of them complaining that “it just ain’t fair?” Heck no; they’re out there working as hard as they can to get their ballplayers ready to compete — and sometimes they do pull off the big upset. OPS coaches figured out a long time ago that in order to be competitive, you have to outwork the big boys. Player development is the key. Ask Benson head coach Chris Burke, whose Legion team defeated Westside early in the summer, if playing fewer games would have made that win more likely. I’m sure he’d say that guys coming into his program generally lag behind players in the top programs developmentally and need every opportunity to catch up. His fleet-footed AAA (All-African American) outfield benefitted from playing a full schedule. That athletic, yet underrepresented, demographic is not going to overcome the lack of youth baseball opportunities in North Omaha by playing Mr. Randel’s reduced schedule. That’s why Coach Burke is feeding them every challenge that they can possibly handle — to make them better and give them a chance at college baseball. (Ironically, one of those AAA outfielders earned a scholarship from Southeast Community College, right there in Mr. Randel’s hometown.)

So, I politely suggest to Mr. Randel — if Beatrice wants to compete with the big boys, you might want to think about attacking the problem with better player development programs rather than trying to pull everyone else downward. Playing fewer games isn’t going to accomplish anything other than denying deserving players the opportunity to hone their skills for the next level. It’s a competitive world — the guys who go on (and remember there were over 100 of them from the Class of 2008) certainly don’t need someone imposing arbitrary and pointless limitations on their opportunities to compete for a college baseball scholarship.

The proposals submitted this fall for baseball (see Article) vary widely in their merit, but in the end, neither makes beneficial changes for the conduct of the Nebraska high school baseball.

The first, offered by Scottsbluff AD Lee Dick, is an ill-conceived plea to the Board of Control to shift the spring sports schedule back a couple of weeks so that outdoor sports can be played in better weather. Certainly, there are very few baseball players, coaches, parents or fans in this state who would disagree with a proposal to play our sport in better weather conditions than we typically have in March in this state. However, Mr. Dick’s proposal does nothing to extend the back-end of the season. It only takes two weeks off the beginning. (Actually his proposal only deals with the date of the first practice, not the first game, but as a matter of safety and preparedness, games are going to be delayed if the first practice is delayed.) Rather than surrendering two weeks of our spring season to Mr. Dick’s proposal, doesn’t it make sense to keep our dates as they are and play the games that we can when weather permits?

Mr. Dick offers the explanation that his whole purpose is to get the Board of Control to consider pushing the entire season — start dates and end dates — back two weeks. His proposal overlooks two key facts: (1) the Board of Control has no authority to amend the Athletic Bylaws, which is where the season start and end dates are codified (only the Representative Assembly can do that), and (2) scheduling the baseball state tournament any later would conflict with graduation dates at most schools.

The problem with Mr. Dick’s proposal is that it could run through the entire legislative process and be approved as written — thereby lopping two weeks off the already short spring baseball season. This is a proposal that should be withdrawn immediately. If Mr. Dick wishes to focus attention on the issue of the spring schedule, he would be better advised to start a discussion among his peers by some other method that poses less risk of adverse consequences than his current legislative proposal.

As far as Mr. Randel’s proposal is concerned, the question of how many games a team should play during a season is, in my opinion, best left up to each school. Certainly, schools are run by educators who have the ability to exercise their own professional judgment in the best educational interest of their students as they see fit. If a particular activities director or his prinicipal or his superintendent believe that students are missing too much class in order to participate in baseball, they can certainly schedule fewer games, or concentrate more of their games on Saturdays.

As to the matter of fairness, if a school chooses on its own to limit the number of games it plays, is it at a competitive disadvantage against those schools that choose to play more games? That raises the question of whether a team gets better by playing more games or by practicing more. Mr. Randel commented that his coaches have complained that playing too many games reduces practice time where fundamental baseball skills could be taught. Presumably, his coaches believe, then, that there is a “right mix” of practices and games that creates optimal results on the field of play. Should the NSAA dictate to each school what that “right mix” is? Or should each school be allowed to determine that on its own? Is it “unfair” that some teams play more games than others when in fact their choice to do so may hurt their mastery of basic baseball skills by reducing practice time?

Complaints of “unfair advantage” or efforts to “level the playing field” seem to be unfounded when there are differing philosophies about the optimal mix of games and practices in a team’s schedule. Yes, Major League Baseball pursues a policy of maximizing the number of games played in order to perfect their consistency and performance, as noted by Mr. Simons. However, those are professional baseball players who have already mastered the fundamental skills required to play the game. They are the best of the best. At the high school level, it is unclear whether playing more games at the risk of fewer practices hurts or helps a team. Many coaches will probably agree that players need more practice time and that too many games on the schedule cut into time that could be used to teach basic skills. So, is there really a consensus out there that playing more games creates an “unfair advantage” that needs to be eliminated by an externally imposed limit?

The fact is that some very successful programs do play more games. Millard West, for example, typically plays more games than most other Class A schools. They are also consistently a very good team. Is there a cause and effect relationship between those two facts? Are they good because they play more games? Or are they good despite the fact that they play more games? Does Mr. Randel know the answer to this question?

The question of self-determination versus regulation by central authority is a hot political issue nationally. At what point should a central authority deprive a local entity of its right to conduct its affairs at it sees fit? One’s answer to that question is, more than likely, determined by a one’s political philosophy. For my part, I prefer regulation only when there is a clear and obvious problem resulting from, or threatened by, a lack of regulation. Is there really a problem here that needs to be fixed? Does there currently exist some gross unfairness in the baseball governing system that is preventing schools that do not wish to play as many games as others from being competitive? My belief is that there is not and that there are many other reasons why some schools are less competitive than others that have a much more significant impact than the number of games played.

Instead of looking for ways to “level the playing field” in baseball, I would encourage Mr. Randel to look within his own organization and work on ways to do a bit of field leveling there. The hills and valleys within the NSAA do a much greater insult to the notions of fundamental fairness and equality than do the number of games played by a high school baseball team. The gross disparity in representation of students in Nebraska on the NSAA Board of Control cries out for action. That action can either come from the within the NSAA itself, or it can come from an external source such as a U.S. District Court enforcing the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteen Amendment. The fact that District II, with its 38,679 students, has the same representation on the all-powerful Board of Control as District V, with 2,449 students, is an embarassment to this state, which has as its motto “Equality Before the Law.”

The growth of this site will continue along several paths which have previously been established and are which are being extended with the release of this Fall Edition. First, we are continuing to grow temporily — now expanding beyond the traditional high school / Legion baseball season with this Edition that will take us through the end of November. Along these same lines we are planning a Winter Edition that will run from December 1 through the end of February when our Spring Season picks back up. Thus, our coverage of high school baseball in Nebraska will run year-round with four quarterly editions — two in-season editions, Spring and Summer, and two off-season editions, Fall and Winter.

Secondly, our site is growing commercially. We’ve worked very hard over the past three years to develop baseball content that is not available anywhere else in this state. You have rewarded our efforts with your support and loyal readership. In the past, keeping up with the season often kept us so busy that we did not have time to respond to the many requests that we had to place advertising on the site. The pace of the off-season has allowed us to pursue some of those opportunities which has bolstered our belief that there are numerous enterprises in this state who would like to reach out to our customer base with their products and services while at the same time supporting our efforts to publicize and promote high school baseball. We hope that you will welcome and support our sponsorship partners and show them that the high school baseball market in this state is a growing economic powerhouse that should not be overlooked.

Additionally, we are outgrowing the limitations imposed by the LeagueLineup.com format which has served as the template for this site since its inception. This Fall Edition, as well as the Winter and Spring Editions will use a built-from-scratch website format that allows us more flexibility in our presentation of content, photos and graphics. For the summer, we may return to LeagueLineup to facilitate team self-reporting, or we may integrate similar features into our own site. But for now, expect to see a different look than in the past. And expect that look to keep evolving.

And, finally, we are growing with new services — particularly our BaseballNebraska Prospects service which you will be hearing more about in the coming weeks. Our goal is to develop new strategies, tools and methods for promoting Nebraska high school ballplayers, and we think this is a good place to start. We’ve already got both players and college coaches coming to this site, so it only makes sense to provide better ways for the two groups to get together.

We hope that you enjoy perusing this Fall Edition and learning more about some of the outstanding young men who are making their way to the head of the class. The Class of 2008 has moved on (more than 100 of them off to compete for a roster spot on a college baseball team) and a new wave is rushing in to take their place. It will be fun and exciting to watch the next classes develop and mature into the best in the state and region. And, as demonstrated by the success of the NP Dodge Wildcats this summer, Nebraska high school baseball can compete nationally with the best of them. It’s a great time to be a part of this sport!

(Oh, and by the way, if you feel inspired to add comments to this post or any future ones, just register and then let’s hear what you have to say.)