I thought out this blog post while in the shower this morning. So, we’re not even going to pretend that it is well-researched. It’s stream of consciousness. I apologize in advance.
Josh Beckett (image from Over The Monster and Getty Images)
There are Boston Red Sox fans who I follow on Twitter who are upset that the media has pointed out that Josh Beckett went golfing, despite having a muscle issue and missing a scheduled start on the mound. They feel as if the media has ganged up on the pitcher, and he has every right to play golf on an off-day. Beckett himself even defended his actions by saying that he “only gets 18 off-days a year” and that he had every right to use one to hit the links.
Let’s put the supposed media “witch hunt” aside. Let’s look at the actuality of an athlete playing another sport as leisure while in season.
Professional and college athletes are often forbidden from playing any other sport – even one as innocuous as golf – while in season. For example, a very good friend of mine played Division I hockey, but she also loved to ski. But when she was home for the brief time she had for the holidays because she was in-season, she had to watch everyone else in her family ski while she sat there. She couldn’t downhill or cross country ski. She had an understanding with her teammates and her coaching staff that because she was an athlete in season, she couldn’t jeopardize being injured participating in another sport at leisure.
Sometimes this expectation is physically written into a contract with a professional athlete, and sometimes it is just implied. If you make a living from your body being at its peak, you don’t put it at risk of any type of injury.
There is a vast difference in athletic output between golf and skiing, but you still can be injured playing golf (ask my father, who actually broke ribs playing golf a few years back.) While those injuries are usually relatively mild, the risk is still there. And given that baseball is a sport where players often miss starts due to things as minor as ingrown nails and broken toes*, the minor injuries that golf can cause are significant enough to meddle in the everyday life of a baseball player. For a pitcher, the repetitive shoulder isolating actions of golf increase that risk more. If you’re a pitcher with over ten years of major league wear and tear on your arms and shoulders, and you have a sore latissimus muscle (which Beckett has) the motion of hitting a golf club may not be advisable in season. (In layman’s terms, the latissimus muscle is the muscle found from under your armpit around the side of your back. It’s a muscle used in both pitching and swinging a golf club.)
Also, there is that old adage that if you’re not well or performing well enough to do your job, go to school or attend an event, than you shouldn’t be stepping out and doing something enjoyable in its stead. When you were a kid, and you had to stay home from school with either an legitimate illness or a trumped up cold because of an exam you wanted to avoid, your mother wouldn’t just let you go to the mall or playground or what have you later in the day. No, even if you were feeling better, you stayed home. You needed to keep up appearances – or at least my mom wanted us to. Even to this day, if I am stuck home sick, I’m not jumping in The Kat Mobile and putting around. That’s playing hooky. I don’t want to appear to be playing hooky.
If you are being paid handsomely to show commitment to your job, you never want to appear to be playing hooky.
Josh Beckett knew he was not making his next scheduled start. He then decided to go play golf with another pitcher. He’s an adult and is allowed to make his own decisions, but I just don’t know if that was his best one. Is the media out to get Beckett? Frankly, the media is out to get anyone and everyone involved with the Red Sox because no one within the organization is showing accountability. It’s like a consumer report – you pay $50 to attend a game, you spend $140 a month to get a cable package with NESN so you can watch it, but you’re getting nothing but failure from that money. I think it’s fine for the media to ask these questions. The product is faulty, and they are just trying to figure out why.
*And before anyone comments, “Have you ever had one of those injuries? They hurt,” yes, I have had both. And danced on pointe, ran cross-country and did beam with both. I’ll get off my high horse now.