Where have you gone, Jackie?
Last week, the Chicago Cubs signed Notre Dame University wide receiver and probable first-round NFL Draft pick Jeff Samardzija to an $8-million contract over five years to forgo a pro football career and play baseball instead.
Why is this significant? Well, besides the fact that it puts Jeff Samardzija in that select class of people (those who can play multiple sports at a professional level) that I wish would contract a massive case of pink eye or a serious allergic reaction to water, his ability to earn a king’s ransom playing two sports is almost unheard of these days.
Of course, part of the shortage of multisport athletes has to do with the fact that playing more than one sport at the highest level in the world is only slightly less demanding than being Barry Bonds’ personal trainer/chemist. Besides the obvious natural gifts required, the dedication to hone sport-specific skills like hitting a baseball, catching a football or dribbling a basketball is nothing short of monk-like, and word on the street is that traveling the world with four different all-star teams wreaks havoc on the home life.
More than that, though, sports culture has undergone a shift over the past few decades, whereby today’s young athletes (read the kids at today’s high schools and middle schools) have been taught to value specialization at an earlier age than ever before. Gone are the days when little Timmy played a varsity sport every season (he started for some, sat the bench for others) because he didn’t want to give up an activity that he loved.
Here are the days when a Philadelphia couple decided to hold their sixth-grade son back a year in school so he would ascend one scouting service’s national sixth-grade prospect rankings. Do you suppose he was spending his spring season running track or playing baseball? Me either.
But the decline of multisport athletes isn’t solely the responsibility of obsessive parents or college scouts. In a youth sports world without an offseason, playing even one game is a year-round commitment at the highest levels.
Try convincing your sophomore field hockey player to keep playing soccer and lacrosse in the winter and spring, respectively, when there are traveling teams to join, training camps to attend and offseason workouts to sweat out. What do you call a starter on the football team who spends the rest of the year playing soccer and lacrosse instead of weight training with the rest of his pigskin buddies? These days, you call him next year’s backup, the guy the coach uses as a “cautionary” tale about the importance of commitment.
When Jackie Robinson became the first athlete in UCLA history to letter in four sports in a single year (football, track, baseball, basketball), was anybody questioning his drive on the football field? Were they concerned that his playing baseball, mostly for fun, was hampering his performance on the gridiron? If they were, they weren’t the ones voting him an All-America selection at running back in 1941. Maybe the track coaches wished he spent more time practicing his take-offs or his landings instead of taking ground balls or batting practice with the baseball team, but they didn’t mind when he won the NCAA broad jump title in 1940.
Robinson was, to be sure, a rare talent and possibly the most gifted athlete in American history. But he also grew up in a time when demands on young athletes’ time were smaller and the freedom to pursue as many sports as one wanted was as natural as breathing. Ironically, it was Robinson’s weakest sport, baseball that transformed him into a national icon and an inspiration to millions.
Had he been born in 1991, would Jackie even be playing baseball by this, his senior year of high school, or would he be so busy traveling to basketball camps and making football scouting tapes that his bat and glove would be collecting dust?
Between the time and athletic demands, the days of the four-sport college athlete are surely behind us. It’s the days of the two- or three-sport high school athlete that deserve to live on.
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