SportsDystopia

A blurb about Dusty Baker in Friday’s San Francisco Examiner caught my eye earlier today.

“The current Cincinnati Reds and former Giants manager is going back to youth baseball.  This weekend, Baker will be the fill-in coach for 9-year old son Darren’s traveling tournament team out of Roseville.  The tournament will be in Sunnyvale.  ‘The head coach is away for the weekend.  I begged my dad to coach the team’ Darren said.”

Far be it from me to knock a moment of father-son bonding over baseball, but the thought that immediately jumped to my mind was “Has Dr. James Andrews ever performed Tommy John surgery on a 9 year old before?”

Dusty, you’ll remember, was the man who once said that Kerry Wood “…doesn’t really need a closer in the 9th.”, after Wood had already undergone the Tommy John surgery earlier in his career.  Sure enough, Dusty rode his horse right into the ground, and to make a long story short, Wood eventually was converted into the Cubs’ closer after it was clear his surgically repaired shoulder and elbow could no longer bear the strain of being a starter.

I’m sure the youth league must have some type of rules about limiting the number of innings a kid can pitch in the tournament, otherwise, a small child might be throwing about 500 pitches this weekend in Sunnyvale, CA.

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