{"id":18959,"date":"2015-09-20T17:31:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-20T16:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=18959"},"modified":"2015-09-20T17:31:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-20T16:31:52","slug":"the-risk-of-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=18959","title":{"rendered":"The risk of injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday night I noted on Twitter that it was good to see BT Sport finding space in their schedule for a live MLB game on an evening when their coverage of full Champions League football was beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

BT Sport\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coverage of the two sports this week contained two painful moments.<\/span><\/p>\n

On Tuesday night I was watching the MLB game between the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates and occasionally dipping into the Champions League action. At one point I switched over to the PSV-Man Utd game to see the dreadful sight of a player \u00e2\u20ac\u201c United\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Luke Shaw, it turned out \u00e2\u20ac\u201c prone on the pitch surrounded by medical staff in what was obviously a serious incident.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaw had suffered a double fracture to his right leg following a tackle by PSV defender Hector Moreno. It was a very poor challenge, yet prompted the usual defence that he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean to hurt his opponent. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure it is a true statement; however all it tells you is that Moreno isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a complete liability who shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be allowed on a football pitch again. <\/span><\/p>\n

Still, that seems to be the way it works in football. So long as the offender is judged as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcnot that sort of player\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the outrage doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t last for long.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreno\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s challenge was forceful and reckless and had it not resulted in a bad injury then it would have been purely down to good fortune. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s amazing how often players get lucky in similar situations and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a potential skewed assessment of risk involved here. Players and fans put a lot of store in the likelihood of a bad injury occurring seemingly being small and therefore accept the fact that there can be a huge impact if that risk does occur.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaw will be out for many months and will face doubts as to whether he will fully recover and come back as the player he was (or was developing into). Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hoping that he does.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then on Thursday, in the final game of the Cubs-Pirates series, Pittsburgh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Korean infielder Jung Ho Kang suffered a fractured tibia and torn meniscus when he was taken out at second base on a slide by Chris Coghlan.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kang has been a revelation in his debut MLB season, brushing aside doubts over how his excellent performances in his native country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s baseball league would translate. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a terrible blow for him \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the many baseball fans in Korea so excited about their star player \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that he will play no part in the rest of the Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 season.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, few players complained about it much, including Kang himself. Charging into second base to disrupt a potential double-play is considered not simply part of the game, but part of playing the game \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe right way\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. If that occasionally sees a player end up with a bad injury then that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just accepted as an unfortunate consequence.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not the only baseball fan who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite see it that way, but to a large extent that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really matter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Call it \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe right way\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcspirit of the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcunwritten rules\u00e2\u20ac\u2122; every sport has a code that the players create, endorse and uphold. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the way it should be as they are the ones playing the game and whose profession it relates to. Some fans may disagree with it at times, but unless it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something so out of kilter that a groundswell of opposition forces the governing body to reassess, that disagreement is a side issue. This is the game and how it is played, if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it watch something else.<\/span><\/p>\n

The trouble is that these rules, like most other things in sport, tend to bend when they come up against the rather one-eyed view teams have depending on which side of the matter they are on.<\/p>\n

The Cubs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 manager Joe Maddon lashed out at the St Louis Cardinals on Friday for retaliating after pitcher Dan Haren hit the Cards\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Matt Holliday with a pitch. Intentional or not \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and as someone who supports neither team I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll put my largely unbiased view in the not camp in this case \u00e2\u20ac\u201c St Louis saw fit to respond by hitting Anthony Rizzo with a pitch soon after.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maddon was unhappy and had every right to be, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a ridiculous custom that teams deliberately\u00c2\u00a0pitch at\u00c2\u00a0players in this way, but there are plenty in the game who see it as a key way in which teammates are protected.\u00c2\u00a0 W<\/span>hether Maddon agrees with the act or not, there will be times when his team decides to do the exact same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

So long as a player doesn’t get badly hurt by the practice then the potential risk of serious injury from it will be overlooked, just like a diving tackle or a hard slide. Let’s hope there’s a good reason for people to keep turning a blind-eye to it for a long time to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday night I noted on Twitter that it was good to see BT Sport finding space in their schedule for a live MLB game on an evening when their coverage of full Champions League football was beginning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-18959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18959"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19000,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18959\/revisions\/19000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}