Jennie Finch - Breaking the Barriers

On May 29, 2016, history was made.  Jennie Finch, women's college World Series and Olympic Gold medal winner, was the first ever female to manage a professional baseball team.  And I got to see history be made.  She was a guest manager for the Bridgeport Bluefish, an independent ball club in the Atlantic League, and they happened to be playing the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs (the team I work for) that day.  Even though she was only a guest, and she only coached third base for 2 innings, seeing her in that role was inspiring.  Now...  I can't pretend that I knew who she was before this.  I had to do my research.  However, finding out who she was and then realizing how much of a big deal this was going to be was kind of neat. Jennine Finch, for those of you who don't know, is the face of softball.  She was a stud in college and played on two Olympic teams, winning gold and silver respectively.  Finch has set several records throughout her career, including consecutive games, 100+ career victories, strikeout leader, innings pitched leader, and tied for no-hitters.  She retired in June 2010, but has been in the community doing things like this manager position since then.

The game was a close one on the 29th...  The Bluefish had an early start, scoring a run in the 4th.  After 2 innings though, Finch did not come out to coach 3rd base anymore.  She kept herself in the dugout to manage from there.  The Blue Crabs scored one in the 5th, making it a 1-1 game until the 6th inning.  The bottom of the 6th, the Bluefish scored 2, and there the score remained.  Jennie Finch beat my Blue Crabs 3-1 in her first managerial win.  The below article says that SHE was the winning manager, but I beg to differ.  Yes, she got up and coached 3rd base for 2 innings and then sat in the dugout like a normal manager would do.  But the calls that the article says she made are wrong.  She didn't make any calls.  She didn't give signs.  And she shouldn't have.  If the game got into a situation where there HAD to be a sign put on or a pitcher HAD to come out of the game, what was she going to do?  I'm sure if she practiced her signs, she could give them.  But she didn't.  She wouldn't know who the next pitcher to put in should be.  I commend her for the guest manager position that she had and I am so happy that a female made that step.  But I don't like how this article makes is sound like she did everything.  I'm not trying to put her down...  That's not what this is.  Because she is breaking barriers for females.  She's an amazing role model.  I just wish they got the story right.  She helped.  She sat there and talked with the Bluefish manager and probably learned a lot about what it is to be a professional baseball manager.  The second article posted is short and sweet and describes exactly what she did.

Other than my opinion of how the article was written, I think Jennie did a great job and is a very inspiring woman.  She deserved the win, she earned it fair and square with the help of the Bluefish manager.  Take a look below at the articles.  Let me know what you think of Jennie Finch!


http://espn.go.com/espnw/culture/the-buzz/article/15809795/guest-manager-jennie-finch-leads-bridgeport-bluefish-win

http://sportzedge.com/2016/05/29/jennie-finch-makes-baseball-history-manages-the-bridgeport-bluefish/

Concussion - The Movie

Yup.  I have been one of the few athletic trainers that have not seen "Concussion" yet.  Until Sunday, when our field manager RedBox-ed the movie for the road trip home.  And now I'm going to bring up this crazy debate again.  Feel free to let me know how you feel about this topic.

In the movie, Will Smith does a pretty amazing job portraying Dr. Bennett Omalu.  Of course he did...  He's Will Smith.  He could be cast as a paper bag and do a fantastic job.  I digress...  The whole movie was well cast, well directed, and seemed to follow the events very well.  I was actually really upset at first that I was going to have to watch the movie, but when one of my players asked me "where are we?" and I answered "they just published the journal article", I knew I was sucked in.  The movie was amazing.  It really was.  I learned a lot about the whole case, and it really opened my eyes about how all of it went down.  I mean, the NFL really DID want to cover up the issue on concussions.  They KNEW how terrible it was getting and they still didn't do anything about it.

Now, when movie was being advertised, I did my share of research.  I researched who died from cerebral traumatic encephelopathy (CTE) and how they declined.  I read about the NFL and what they did to cover it up.  All of the articles online say that it wasn't really a cover up and they really didn't know how bad it was.  But the movie shows otherwise.  I read about Mike Webster and Terry Long and the others.  There is just so much information out there about what happened now that the movie is out.  But why does it still make me wonder about how this movie portrayed the medical staff?  I know that Dr. Maroon was actually not a villain, though he was portrayed as such in the movie.  He did not resist Dr. Omalu.  In fact, he brought it to the attention of the NFL when he understood what was going on.  They portray athletic trainers, or "trainers" in the movie, as people that "just tape knees".  It's kind of an embarrassment to the profession, especially now that it's on this huge stage.  I know that the use of athletic trainers in this movie is very minimal, and we are not the people that they are focusing on.  But that one little line bugged me and every other athletic trainer that has seen it.  The movie shows that Dr. Omalu wants to fold the NFL - get rid of it completely. This is not actually something that he wanted to happen.  He wanted the players to have the knowledge of what could happen to them.  The director says that it is an "artistic representation" of what happened and that's why some things are not true to the reality of what happened.  Really?  So you're going to make things up to get a reaction from audiences?  That's what makes me mad about this movie.

If I wasn't a healthcare professional, I probably would have enjoyed the movie, flaws and all.

Read the article below about Mike Webster.  It's a good one.  Interesting to learn about his life.

Comment below if you have anything else to add to this topic!!

http://www.rd.com/health/conditions/mike-webster-brain-injury/

Specializing in One Sport - Bad or Good?

We have all heard the old saying - kids should not specialize in one sport when they are young.  Even in high school they should be multi-sport athletes.  I understand the logic behind this.  It's because the constant repetitive motions of one sport does not harbor on the body well.  The body, when young, needs to change what it does periodically.  When I was in grade school, I played soccer, basketball, I did cheerleading, and I danced.  That stopped when I got to high school though.  I specialized in volleyball.  I played volleyball just about all year round for 4 years.  It was the only sport I really LOVED to do.  Volleyball is a fall sport.  So if I were to have picked a winter sport, I would have had to pick swimming, indoor track, or basketball.  Well, I'm TERRIBLE at basketball, I wasn't interested in swimming, and track?  Forget it.  In the spring, I had the choice of lacrosse, outdoor track, or softball.  Well, being the tom-boy I am, I didn't want to play lacrosse if I couldn't hit anyone, I was ever more terrible at softball, and track?  Still forget it.  I danced all year long too, had multiple dance classes in school and at a studio.  Should I have tried at least one more sport, if not 2?  Probably.  But I didn't think it would be an issue.  And after 4 years of year-round volleyball, I still don't.  I might be the only AT in the world that thinks playing one sport in high school is ok, but I truly believe that.  When the child is younger than high school age, yes, absolutely, expose them to all the sports.  But I feel like high school, the kid should not feel like they need to do more than one sport.  Especially if there's nothing else that interests them.

All that being said, I came across an article saying that it's bad if kids aren't multi-sport athletes.  David Bell, assistant professor at UW, and his colleagues did a research study about specializing in a sport more than 8 months out of the year.  They found that athletes are more likely to experience knee and hip overuse injuries.  Also, playing for multiple teams in the same sport is a no-no.  School size seems to have a lot to do with it.  Smaller schools, about 600 students, tend to have more multi-sport athletes, whereas larger schools, over 2000 students, tend to have specialized athletes.  The results are just from that area, and Bell does not want to make the assumption for all schools nationwide.  But it looks like that will be the trend.

"For now, the key takeaway from the UW research is that training and competing in the same sport for more than eight months of the year — to the exclusion of other sports — is not healthy for young athletes and could lead to long-term-injuries."

Let me know what you think!!

Read the article below!!

http://isthmus.com/news/news/specialization-in-one-sport-can-be-bad-for-kids/