THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2006
Friday Edition: Big Hurts for Little Athletes
Here is a summertime story to consider.
The Chicago Tribune
reports on what appears to be an uptick in the number of serious
repetitive-motion injuries among very young athletes. The evidence is, for
now, largely anecdotal, but interesting. The story says:
Baseball, once a summer sport, now jams up the entire calendar. In Evanston, [Ill.,]
for example, the regular, or "house," season for children ages 5
through 15 begins in April and ends in June or July, depending on the
league. Travel baseball, which requires a tryout, runs from June
through August. Fall Ball opens in September and lasts through October.
After
that, serious players move to an indoor location through the winter to
work on pitching or batting. Short clinics are held in January,
February and March.
New research shows the year-round play might
disproportionately affect the youngest participants. Last year children
ages 4 through 14 suffered twice as many baseball injuries as those 15
through 24, according to data compiled by Pietro Tonino, chief of sports medicine at Loyola University Health System.
And
it's not just baseball. More children under 14 were hurt playing golf,
soccer and swimming last year than those between 15 and 24. Doctors are
also seeing problems with young runners as well as those who play
football, basketball, softball and volleyball.
"It has become
more of a problem as people realize performing well could be a
scholarship to college," said Tonino, noting the rise in the number of
children in need of ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction -- or Tommy
John surgery, named for the pitcher who first had it nearly three
decades ago -- because of overuse injuries to the elbow cartilage or
elbow bone.
"You don't see the three-sport athlete anymore, and
a big reason is it's getting too hard to organize the schedules,"
Tonino said.
Pitching injuries,
one of the most common youth problems, can be caused by too many
throws, the type of pitches or the mechanics, said Nicholas Gryfakis,
the manager of the Motion Analysis Center at Children's [Memorial] Hospital [in Chicago].
Here are some more resources:
Here is a Blue Cross study [PDF]
on sports injuries and kids, which found that 775,000 kids age 14 and
under make emergency room visits each year with sports related injuries. The study also found:
- Sixty-two percent
of injuries occur during practice (which makes sense, since kids
practice more than they play).
- Kids aged 5
to 14 have the highest injury rate.
- From 1997 to 1999 sports-related
injuries for kids were more widespread than auto-accident injuries to
kids. (This may have something to do with the improving safety of
automobile travel.)
Street Racing Video Online
Al's Morning Meeting reader Sarah Viren at the Houston Chronicle peeked inside the world of illegal street racing, which, she found, is often chronicled online in homemade videos posted on YouTube.com.
A
search on YouTube.com for street racing brings up at least 2,400
videos. Local street and drag racing Web sites, including
Houston-imports.com, also have sections where drivers post their latest
so-called fights.
The
move toward taping and posting street races isn't surprising, experts
say. With the growing popularity of the social Web sites MySpace.com
and Facebook.com, young adults now blog on everything from suicide to
school-yard crushes.
A
study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project last year found
that more than half of all teenagers are so-called content creators,
meaning they have either blogged, created a Web pages or shared
original or remixed music or videos online.
But bravado could get burgeoning street-race filmmakers in trouble. Increasingly, police are monitoring sites frequented by young people.
In January, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.,
officers tracked down teenagers accused in the beating death of a
homeless man by monitoring chatter on a street-racing site. None of the
posters on that site had committed the crime, but they knew the kids
who had, according to reports.
Houston police say they watch Internet sites to find illegal street-racing hot spots.
So why would street racers risk posting what could be self-incriminating material?
"The
idea of creating videos is all about the thrill and about reliving the
thrills," said Mark Moore, CEO of One True Media, whose site,
onetruemedia.com, allows users to produce and post multimedia projects.
"I've seen a teenage girl with a gun, and she points the gun into the
camera. It's the coolness factor and the thrill."
Cigar Lovers Hope for End to Cuban Embargo
Look, I am not making
light of the whole Castro situation, but way beyond the big political,
democracy, human-rights and trade stories is this one, dear to the
hearts of cigar smokers. Since the early 1960s, it has been illegal to
import Cuban cigars into the U.S., even though people smuggle them from Canada all the time. Cigar lovers hope for the day when relations with Cuba are good enough to start importing again.
The Boston Herald reported:
Stephen Willett of L.J. Peretti Co.,
in operation since 1870, said the company once had its own Cuban brand
in the late '30s and early '40s. But he confirmed that today, most
people in this country have never smoked a real Cuban cigar.
"A
lot of companies are geared up for the time when the embargo is
lifted," Willett said. "It would be a phenomenal thing if it happened
and would produce a cigar boom like there was in the 1980s."
Jose Agosto, owner of Gloucester Street Cigar Co., agreed with that prophecy.
"They'll be at a super premium," Agosto said of the Cuban smokes, expecting that a single cigar could cost at least $10.
There is a wonderful
story about how President Kennedy sent his press secretary out to
buy a stockpile of 1,000 Cuban cigars the night before Kennedy signed
the embargo. The story is confirmed in this video of Pierre Salinger himself. For the record, Salinger says he delivered 1,200 cigars to the president.
Guitar-Tabs Web Site Under Attack
The music industry has had it with online sites giving away lyrics and sheet music.
Guitar players who
don't know how to read music use tablature to learn the music. I
took guitar lessons on an off for years while I lived in Nashville, Tenn.
(It's like taking golf lessons in Florida: there are teachers on every
street corner.) In fact, tabs became famous in Nashville, where old session guitarists didn't read music, but using six
lines (representing the guitar strings) and numbers (representing fret
positions), anybody could learn to play without reading a note.
Guitar players often go to Web sites like this one to get the guitar tabs, which tell them where to put their fingers to create the chord progressions for songs. Guitar Tab Universe says National
Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) as well as the Music Publishers'
Association (MPA) are threatening legal action for copyright violation.
Another big site, GuitarTabs.com, also got such a letter. If this spreads, guitar teachers all over will be in big trouble. Guitar geeks are pretty mad about this. There were warnings that this was coming late last year. Songwriters argue that free tabs cut into sheet-music sales.
Guatemalan Adoptions to Slow
New rules that will take effect next year will slow baby adoptions from Guatemala. The Associated Press reports that, right now, every 100th baby born in Guatemala grows up as an adopted American.
Guatemala
is among the easiest countries that American adoptive parents can turn
to, sometimes getting a referral in half the time it takes for other
countries. Check with you local international adoption agencies for
reaction.
Consumer News Tips
I just stumbled across this remarkable collection of links to consumer news. It is sure to produce a lot of story tips.
The site links to many of the best-known consumer journalism units in the country.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas,
edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites,
as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes
directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be
provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends
upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors
and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 7:10:08 PM
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