Two guys are sitting at a bar that overlooks the Grand Canyon. One guy says to the other, “I bet I could jump off this cliff and have the wind pick me up and blow me back onto the cliff.” The other guy, who thought he was kidding and was a little drunk himself, laughs and says, “If you could do that I’ll buy the next round.” The first guy proceeds to go outside and jump. After a few seconds of falling, sure enough the wind catches him and blows him right back to where he jumped from. Stunned the second guy comes in and buys the next round. A little later, and a little drunker, that second guys bets the first that he too could jump and get blown right back to safety. The first guy takes that bet, the two walk outside and our guy jumps off, never to return. The first guy laughs, walks back into the bar, and the bartender says, “Superman, you’re mean.”
There is no easy way to describe just how difficult it is to become a professional athlete, and obviously the odds of becoming a very successful one are therefore microscopic. It is easier to become a Member of Congress than it is to make it to the NBA. And yet, sportswriters- the people on the frontline who know as well as anyone how near-impossible the journey will be- are themselves one of the biggest obstacles to athletic success. The single biggest hurdle these kids will face is hype. And sportswriters are the Wal-Mart of hype- cheap and plentiful. I point all this out because I have a bold suggestion: a moratorium on national sports coverage of High-School athletes. The hype is so dangerous not because of the actual recipient, but more so because of everyone that follows next.
By now you’ve probably heard of Bryce Harper, 16. According to Sports Illustrated he throws 96 mph and hits the ball further than Thor on steroids. SI told stories about him that are ridiculous and yet taken at face value. Story #1 is of high school coaches measuring a home run hit by him as a 15 year old. The home run allegedly went “over the right field fence, two trees, another fence, a sidewalk, five lanes of traffic on elevated South Hollywood Boulevard and yet another sidewalk, until it finally landed in the brown, undeveloped desert.” According to the coaches they measured it at 570 ft.
The number itself should of course be red flag #1- Mark McGwire’s longest home run was measured at 545 ft. But then there’s the story of the measurement itself- the coaches went out months after the home run was hit and found a dimple in the dirt that they say was the home run, did I mention it was raining at the time? Clearly Paul Bunyan has nothing on this kid. SI compared him to LeBron, Tiger, Gretzky, and I-kid-you-not Alexander the Great. The problem with all this isn’t just that SI is essentially saying this kid once caught a fish THIS big, the problem is that they let these stories get him onto the cover of their magazine. Another story tells of when Harper first heard Stephen Strasburg, the recent #1 pick in MLB’s draft, referred to as the “LeBron James of baseball” and Harper’s first reaction was “he stole that from me!” It’s easy to think of hype as harmless, until people start to believe it. If he can jump off the cliff and be fine, so can I…
Not surprisingly Scott Boras represents both Harper and Strasburg, and maybe slightly more surprising is the fact that Harper is now going to take the GED in order to go play college baseball, thus allowing him to enter the MLB draft a few years earlier. Exaggerations or not, I have little doubt that Harper will be the #1 pick in the 2010 draft. I also have little doubt that the contract he receives will set his family up for life. And frankly if SI damages their trustworthiness is the process, that doesn’t really bother me either. The problem that I have with all this isn’t about Harper at all. It’s about the next kid that wants to jump off the cliff.
There are other jumpers- like Jeremy Tyler skipping his senior year of high-school to play pro ball in Europe. Or the countless tennis players or figure skaters who turn pro before they turn 15. Heck if we want to paint them all with the same brush we could even bring in the tons of child actors, some of whom make it, some of whom don’t, but all of whom turned professional long before they finished high school.
Their many stories, all with very individual triumphs and failures, prove that rules and regulations don’t do much to stop them. The NBA institutes an age-rule, guys go to Europe. The MLB says you have to finish High School, guys take the GED. Child-labor laws getting in the way of a movie, just use twins to split the screen-time. Time and again we have seen that there are always ways to skirt the rules. Time and again we have seen that the more attention is paid to these kids, the worse the situation gets. So I repeat my suggestion: ignore ‘em. Stop the presses, and stop the hype. Are there some that are going to be able to make it? Of course, but when glorifying their successes, everyone tends to ignore the great many that fail. And like our guy who jumped, they are not heard from again.
Just how bad is the hype you ask? Well when SI did that cover story on Harper they referred to him as “the chosen one.” Simple enough, I guess. Except that according to Deadspin.com he is the 52nd athlete to have SI label him (or her) the chosen one. Some certainly lived up to it: Tiger in ’96, LeBron in ’02, Michael Phelps in ’04. Some, to varying degrees haven’t: Michelle Wie in ’04, Shaun King in ’99, Terry Cummings ’82.
LeBron of course has lived up to the hype so much that he has become the bar by which all future prodigies are compared. ESPN was televising his high school games, every magazine was dying to put 16-year-old LBJ on their cover, and rumor has it that scouts were watching his 8th grade games. Look, I’m not suggesting we treat sportswriters like they are child-molesters and not let them within 100 yards of a school, but something has to be done. And to me the simplest option is to tell ESPNs, and SIs and their ilk to all stick to college and above, and stop covering high school and below. Basically to tell them to leave them kids alone.
Obviously there is still a need to cover young athletes. In fact the near-entirety of this site is devoted to young athletes, some of whom have shown tremendous athletic prowess. Some of these young athletes will go on to play college ball, some will represent their country on Olympic teams, and if history is any indication there will even be a handful that make it to the big leagues. And yet through it all, one of the things I am most proud of about LBPostSports is that I believe that all the praise/hype of these kids have received from this site has been measured. Some of them will truly do marvelous things that are worthy of every story—but let’s let them grow up a little first.