Tomorrow I’m planning on writing a much more highly involved and heavily researched column on the Dolans’ claim that the Indians will lose $16M this year. So to counterbalance that, today will just be a quick thought or two on an entirely different topic.
I had the mixed pleasure of catching some of last week’s Indians-Angels series on TV, thanks to the local Angels’ affiliates. Anaheim’s Trevor Bell recorded his first major league victory in one of the games of that series. During the course of that broadcast, the Angels’ crack announcing team - Steve Physioc, perhaps the only baseball announcer with frosted tips, and Rex Hudler, who has the Captain-Queeg-like compulsion to hold a baseball in his hand any time the camera is on him - felt the need to wax poetic about their young pitcher.
Specifically, they discussed how Bell came with a high pedigree by virtue of having once been Baseball America’s top 14 year-old pitching prospect.
They followed this comment up by pointing out that another young pitcher on their roster, Sean O’Sullivan, was once rated the top 12 year-old pitching prospect by the same illustrious organization.
I’m profoundly troubled by the encroachment of professional scouting and the professional sports media on youth sports. I love competitive athletics and think that kids should be encouraged to at least try them in some capacity. There are a lot of positives at work, but the primary one among them should be that sports can be fun and social.
That said, we’re all familiar with the fact that kids are entering the pros in various sports at younger and younger ages - or were, until David Stern put a cap on the NBA system that allows the NCAA to continue to get fat off the hard work of kids getting nothing in return but some sorority trim. Also, there was that whole regrettable Maurice Clarett incident, which insured NCAA football would continue to thrive on its own monopoly. (Expect a more thorough assault from me on the NCAA around the opening of this year’s college football season. Guns will be drawn.)
In principle, I’m fine with an 18 year-old kid going pro. If he’s old enough to be drafted by the Army and sent to die for country in a foreign war, he should be old enough to be drafted by a sports franchise and sent to ball for city in a road arena. I think there’s a particularly strong case to be made when you consider how often the kids in question are coming from home environments with grim opportunities for survival, let alone advancement. This is true in the NBA, where a healthy portion of the talent pool comes from crime-ridden housing projects and damaged families - as well as in MLB, where a healthy portion of the talent pool comes from South or Central American countries where outside of athletics their options for the future are equally bleak.
The by-product of this scenario, though, is the descent of scouts on an age bracket that should be more concerned with establishing a driver’s license or a date to Homecoming than their draft position. But if people are going to be able to enter the pro ranks at a younger age, they need to be scouted at a younger age. To use the world’s most dated cliche, it’s a double-edged sword.
But are there no boundaries anymore? NBA scouts checking out a high school phenom is one thing. But Baseball America rating kids who are 12 FREAKING YEARS OLD?! To me, that’s as disturbing as the non-lesbian scenes of “Mulholland Drive.” Can’t we allow our youth to at least grow a grimy peach-fuzz mustache before they have shady chain-smoking men with clipboards analyzing their OPS? For God’s sake, just listen to how dirty that sentence sounds when you say it out loud! If that in itself isn’t an indictment, I don’t know what is….
I tried checking Baseball America to see if 12 is even their floor. But I couldn’t find anything definitive. Most of the sight is “members only” (you know, like a hipster jacket), and to be honest, this is one case where I’d rather not know what’s going on behind the curtain.
Beyond the Trevor Bell / Sean O’Sullivan mention, there are plenty of other signs of this trend. The LeBron documentary “More Than A Game” - which chronicled his senior year at St. Vincent-St. Mary - had its local premiere less than 7 days ago. The Little League World Series is televised on ESPN this week. Sportscenter’s “Top Plays” now regularly include highlights from high school games. And earlier this summer, ESPN announced the expansion of its ESPN Local wing, which sounds like it will spread gradually across the country over the course of the next several years.
I can’t find it right now, but ESPN’s program director announced the ESPN Local expansion by envisioning a future where (paraphrase alert) “dads can instantly upload the scores of their son or daughter’s Little League games for coverage.” As if parents haven’t gotten crazy enough on their own about their kids’ leagues. Now we’re going to bring in one of the biggest media juggernauts in the country to fan the flames.
So where does this lead us? The title of the LeBron doc is telling. Sports have indeed become more than a game. I’m just troubled by the accompanying expectation that parents will want their sons and daughters to be more than kids.
-T
(view comments)
-
samflamont liked this
-
josemesaisdead posted this
