GMA ran a story on a kid this morning who got cut from his high school baseball team because he's not good enough to make the team. Unfortunately, the kid is a double below the waist amputee and therefore the version of the story they ran was about that and not about what actually gets you cut from a team, lack of skill set. I firmly believe and have written in this space before that sports are the great equalizer between a lot of other socially driven issues that face society. Take a look at at almost all professional sports from their beginnings to present day and it's clear to see the changes that took place from a socio-economic prospective. Sports, at their core are about winning, and in order to win you need the best players available to you. The owners of every major sport in the world didn't all get together and say, "Hey, let's help the racial divide by giving minorities a chance to make a living playing this game." No, they went out and found the athletes with the highest skill set and thought it was a wise decision to pay them for that skill regardless of race, creed or anything else that makes one person different than the next.
There were a few facts that GMA pointed out that I thought did not help their point in the story.
1) The kid is a pitcher. While pitchers aren't often thought to need a lot of mobility there are very specific plays in baseball where a pitcher needs to be able to run. Covering bunts was brought up in the piece. I can also think of covering home plate in the event of a passed ball and a runner on third. And, a ground ball fielded by the first baseman often requires the pitcher to cover first. These are not un-athletic moves and often turn into a foot race between the pitcher and the base runner. You would be a pretty bad coach if you simply over looked this skill set for your pitching staff. While they didn't give his 40, 60 or shuttle times in the piece, they did have ample footage of him walking at it looked a bit awkward and forced leading me to believe mobility in any of these situations would definitely be an issue.
2) The kid has a fastball of 80 mph. Without calling names I could go through a litany of guys I grew up with playing against that at the little league level threw the equivalent of 80 and were dominant. Probably the case with this kid. But, like all those guys I'm not naming, everybody else grew up too and by the time we were playing varsity baseball, the kids you used to fear were the ones you hoped were pitching because their 80mph fastball was the same as it was 5 years before. What used to be dominating was now basically a batting practice equivalent fastball. I played on a lot of pretty good baseball teams growing up and an 80mph fastball was easily on the low end for most of the guys on our staff. It certainly is not an impressive number and I'd also venture to say it's probably not accurate as there was no video footage of a gun actually recording an 80mph fastball.
3) The kid is right handed. If you know anything about baseball this is a big factor. If he's left handed and throws 80 and can't run but has other decent off speed stuff, he probably makes the team.
The thing that gets to me most about this story is that it's so easy to see this situation isn't about this kids disability or his ability to overcome it to this point in his life, but the media sensationalizing it and skewing the facts to get a reaction out of the uninformed masses sitting on their couch drinking their morning coffee. Whoever the correspondant was doing the story said the kid had a real shot as a big league prospect. This is just a ridiculous statement and no big surprise that there were no MLB scouts offering their opinions on his skills.
Jim Abbott is probably one of the greatest pitchers ever to play the game and he only had one hand. His disability didn't hold him back because the rest of the skills he brought to the table made up for the fact that he only had one hand. There was another story I saw the other day about a division one basketball player who is an amputee from the elbow down on one arm. At some point, his playing career will probably end as well, but for now, he's able to bring other skills like size to the table to make up for that fact.
Unfortunately for this young man he's reached that point where, at least to this coach, the level of the game has passed his skill set. It sucks. Believe me, I know. But no coach would be around very long if he cut talented players simply because they didn't have the legs he was born with. If you're good enough to play, you'll play regardless of what may be seen as a disability to others.
I'm not here to bash this kid. In fact I think it's great that he's overcome all of the obstacles he had to just to make it to this point in his life, much less baseball. He loves the game of baseball and wants to keep playing and he's hurt that now he's reached that point where the level of the game has passed the skill set he has to offer. Unfortunately, this happens at some point to 99% of the people who play sports growing up. Even the ones who work really hard and really want to be professionals. If it didn't, professional athletes wouldn't be as well paid as they are because they'd be easily replaceable.
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