Opinion: Health misinformation is rampant in youth baseball. Why isn’t MLB doing more to help?
By the time a young player is meeting with an orthopedic surgeon, it is too late.
“We all know that we are in the middle of an epidemic with our youth throwers,” an orthopedic specialist opined in a March editorial. The sports medicine professionals and readers of the journal Arthroscopy may know this, but it is far from common knowledge among parents and coaches in youth baseball leagues.
As scientists and sports fans, we are particularly interested in a scientific, evidence-based approach to injury prevention and sports medicine. As parents, we have a personal investment in youth sports leagues’ approach to injury prevention. Our child has played baseball in three youth leagues, and there has been little oversight or guidance regarding player safety. If our experience is the norm, then it seems most youth baseball players play with little supervision on sports-specific injury prevention, and education and outreach for coaches and parents is insufficient, to put it mildly.
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