A Plea to Return to Seasonal Sports

I so agree with the ideas expressed by John Smoltz about kids playing the same sport not just during the season, but during the rest of the year, as described in this article. I have seen the result of kids playing the same sport year-round and while sometimes there are positives, there are also negatives. For example, a young man I know was told by his baseball coach to not play golf as it would throw off his baseball swing. There's issues with that statement:

1. It is a different physical motion with the body when you swing a golf club and a baseball bat. The main difference is where your head is pointed. Do you look down at the ground when hitting a baseball? Of course not! Do you look up at where you want to put the ball when you swing a golf club? Of course not! Two different types of swings.
2. I think I am more likely to play golf when I am elderly than I am to play baseball. Golf is a lifelong sport while baseball is terminal. Even the great baseball players would probably tell you that. What is sad for me is that this young man has turned down opportunities to play golf over the last couple of years. Eventually, he will end his baseball career and then what? He will likely want to learn to play golf. Except he will be in his early-20s (assuming he plays throughout college) and will have lost years of time he could have been learning. 

I guess the other thing that plays into all of this is that when I was young, I hated golf. I really did. My dad tried to teach me to not move my head and grabbed my hair. When I swung, my head moved and my hair was pulled. It hurt. Not being mature enough to understand what Dad was trying to do, I spent a lot of years despising the sport. I realize now that if I had gotten over myself and listened to Dad, I might have been able to spend a lot more time with him and, perhaps, with my brother on the golf course. Sometimes I ponder the idea that because I didn't play golf, I put up a wall between myself and the two of them where they are on one side and I am on the other. Of course I can't change the past, but I admit the thought has crossed my mind.

Back to the article, I see kids that play baseball year-round and think their feces is without odor. Those kids may or may not be as good as they think they are at playing the sport. I also see really good baseball players who don't play year-round and when they tried out for the high school team, they didn't make it. My hunch is that the coach knows who plays year-round and who doesn't. Maybe, in a coach's eyes, playing the sport year-round shows a commitment to the sport that he really wants on his team. After all, I agree that if you have 9 guys playing baseball year-round and traveling to different cities to play in tournaments, there is likely a bond and a trust that develops. Then, when those 9 guys go to the high school level, they are a well-oiled machine and, possibly, don't make the same mistakes as 9 guys who haven't played together.

And yet, when I think about my own athletic career, there were kids when I was in high school (Fall 1985 - Spring 1988) who swam year-round. There was a swim club (Cedar Rapids Aquatics Association or CRAA) and the really fast kids were members of that club and swam year-round. They worked on their stroke, they competed in regional meets, and they were a lot faster than I could ever hope to be. Back in those days, there was no such thing as "being cut" from the Varsity boy's swim team - if you went out for the sport, you were on the team. Period.

I don't have the answer to all of this, but I did like the idea behind Smoltz's opinion.