Where have you gone, Big Papi?

Numb. That's how I felt when I got the news, conveniently emailed by a Yankee fan, that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez were on The List. Oddly enough, by numb I don't mean shocked into a catatonic state. What I felt was more akin to a yawn, a ho-hum feeling of non-surprise, and that's not a good thing.

The whole steroid thing never really surprised me, unfortunately. That the merry bunch of Red Sox known as the "Idiots" might have been looking for an extra edge is not a shocker. Athletes have always been looking for an edge, something to make them stronger, faster or just a tad better than the guy on the other team. In baseball, 162 games is a long season and guys have used things since the beginning of time to help them stay in the game and off the bench. Jim Bouton told us about greenies in "Ball Four", and Ken Caminiti introduced us to steroids in baseball, and Jose Canseco has become a best-selling author chronicling the steroid controversy in his own inimitable way. I guess I'm not surprised that a guy who is on the border of washing out of the Bigs (where are you, Jim Parque?) might use something to stay because it might mean the difference between a $1 million contract and trying to catch on as an assistant coach at some high school in the boondocks. I'm not surprised that Manny Ramirez or Roger Clemens might think about how to get an edge when their body starts to do what most bodies do after the age of 30 and their former team has told everyone their best days are behind them. So, I don't react with shock and surprise and outrage. The innocence left for me a long time ago.

It has now been nearly a week, and Big Papi has declined comment until he gets "the rest of the story". Opinions on talk radio have been flying around, heck I've been listening to a Boston sports talk radio station for the last 3 hours and the Ortiz/steroid chatter has not let up, despite the fact that the Sox lost a heartbreaker to the Rays in extra innings last night.

But what of our children? How about the 12-year old boy who worshipped the Red Sox and the lovable idiots? How do we deal with the fall from grace of his heroes? Well, we live in a society where the camera is on 24/7 and no one really has a private life anymore. We had a former President admit an affair after the sordid details were laid out for all to read. And what was it that James Carville said about Bill Clinton? "He's a good man who done bad". That's probably the way we ought to think about our athlete heroes too.

The more important question from all of this is how do we teach our kids about performance enhancers? What am I supposed to think about the parent who lets her 9-year old kid drink a Red Bull before a football game so he "wakes up"? Is this kid well on his way to being someone who keeps upping the ante until he's taking speed to get through high school football practice? Hey, I'm 42 and I remember guys talking about "the juice" back in high school in the 1980's. You are never going to solve the PED problem because anytime you match up hyper-competitive people with the potential for glory or dollars or scholarships, someone is going to think it's worth it to go after that extra push.

So, the "solution" is like it is with anything else. Take away the secrecy and the silence. Talk openly to your kids about the dangers of PEDs - and don't think it's only Major League ballplayers who have access to it. Newsflash: if your kid is playing competitive sports in high school, there is stuff around. Should the schools test for PEDs? I personally hate the violation that is drug testing, but if it takes away the peer pressure and makes kids understand the consequences, maybe it's a good thing.

So, let's all come down off the high horse and admit this stuff is a lot closer to home than anyoe ever wanted to think. We need to talk about it with our kids and make sure they get an understanding at a young age about what is right and wrong with competition.

Throwing Conventional Wisdom a Curve

None other than the "Paper of Record" had an article this weekend by Mark Hyman suggesting that the notion that little league pitchers should avoid throwing curveballs is bunk. Most of us who grew up in the 1970s and later have had it drummed into our heads that attempting to throw the deuce before age 14 would cause irreparable elbow damage, hairy palms and maybe even blindness, and should be avoided at all costs. Fathers who teach their sons the old Uncle Charlie are to be scorned and dismissed as men who would ruin their son's arms for a shot at vicarious youth sports glory. Well, what to make of all this?

First off, it appears that the notion that curves are bad came largely from anecdotal evidence and was never studies under controlled conditions. Instead, Hyman's article compares it to the Middle Ages belief that the world was flat, well, because someone said it was. In this case, Sandy Koufax's orthopedic surgeon may have been the first to curse the curveball, and was followed by others including the esteemed James Andrews who has performed over 100 Tommy John surgeries. The two independent studies undertaken to investigate the curveball's impact on young arms seem to conclude that not only are curves less stressful than fastballs, but nothing linked curves to elbow injuries!

The Alabama study can be found in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, and concludes that, "the curveball may not be more potentially harmful than the fastball for youth pitchers. This finding is consistent with recent epidemiologic research indicating that amount of pitching is a stronger risk factor than type of pitches thrown."

Andrews, for one, takes issue with the study precisely because of its controlled environment, and states that fatigue and game conditions need to be factored in before anyone takes the new information as carte blanche to get every kid over 6 raining down hammers on opposing hitters. I guess the lesson here needs to be a common sense one, in that we are really looking at overuse as the main culprit in destroying talented young arms. Maybe teaching a kid to throw a curveball as a second pitch isn't going to be the immediate death sentence to his arm that it was once thought to be. But, throwing 30+ curveballs in a row at age 12 (as Andrew's related had been the case with one of his recent surgical subjects) is certainly not going to be a positive contributor to a kid's baseball longevity.

I am in the northeast, where baseball begins in the early spring and ends in late fall. I know in some areas of the country, kinder weather can extend that season. But even for us, kids arms can take a ton of abuse in those 9+ months of the year. Maybe it's not the curve, but coaches and parents need to follow a common sense approach overall in order to keep young arms healthy. I know that in Little League, we monitor kids pitch counts and innings, but when we get into some of the travel seasons the monitoring is less stringent. Add to that the fact that some parents may have their kids playing in multiple leagues and you've got a recipe for trouble.

Driving me Batty

Anybody else spending beaucoup time trying to figure out what type/size/weight bat to get for their little leaguer? It's enough to drive a grown man crazy, or at least get him fired from his job for lack of productivity....My son just started playing summer baseball for the local Williamsport tournament team. He must have had a great Little League season, so it's all good, right? Well, sort of. You see, the problem is that our Little League season is now a wood bat league. So, the kids spend March through June using the lumber to ply their trade. And they do a damn good job once they get used to it. However, when we start tournament play in late June, we are faced with the dilemma of metal bats. So, your ten year old has acquitted himself well all spring with a 28" Louisville slugger ash bat, what do you do about a metal bat once you go to tournament play? We struggled with this one. Say the wood bat has a minus 3 drop, it's now a 28/25. Do you go to a metal -12.5 DeMarini 28/15.5? It's all about bat speed right? Or do you compensate with a longer bat (bigger sweet spot) understanding that the kid swung a much heavier wood bat with success during the regular season? The brain damage involved in the decision was unbelievable (Youth Sports Crazy, right?), but we ultimately decided upon a 30"/21 oz. metal model from Anderson Bats. The "Techzilla". It's a little heavier than most, but at 30", the sweet spot seems legit, and the added heft gives it a little more power. Well, 5 games in, so far so good. He is scalding line drives like I haven't seen from him before. And, he doesn't seem to be having much trouble getting the extra 2" around on the faster pitchers. Again, it's probably also a question of weighting, and how the bat weight is distributed, but we have been very happy with the results so far. I think the extra 2" is giving him confidence to get on pitches on the outer half of the plate (and we all know that LL umps have a generous definition of "the outer half"). Also, the extra couple of oz's has given him a little additional pop versus an ultra light model. The final question for many might be, does it really make a difference to spend $200 or more on a bat when I can get a $40 model at Wal-Mart that seems just as good? I believe the answer is yes, unfortunately. An expensive bat won't make your kid hit the ball if he doesn't already. But, if your kid is squaring it up and putting the ball in play, a high-tech bat will wring out all the advantages of modern science to put the biggest charge into the ball. Ask yourself, are you a guy who would spend $300 on a graphite driver to help out your golf game? Well, it's the same parallel...