THURSDAY, Aug. 30, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- Age counts in Little League Baseball, where boys 9-12 slug it out on ball diamonds across the country, hoping for a chance to play in their own World Series.
That's why when a birth certificate uncovered a few days ago seemed to suggest that pitcher Danny Almonte of the Rolando Paulino All-Stars Bronx Little League team was really 14 instead of 12, the baseball world cried foul. If he and his parents have miscalculated his age, and Danny's ineligible to play, it could cost the future all-star and his team their third-place finish in this year's Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa. Almonte pitched a perfect game and struck out 46 batters in three starts during his team's part of the Series. The last game of the Series was played Aug. 26.
Is stripping a title fair for that small a difference in age? Do two years really matter that much?
"There's a huge difference between a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old boy," says Dr. Jordan D. Metzl, medical director of the Sports Medicine Institute for Young Athletes at the Hospital for Special Surgery at Cornell Medical College in New York City.
"The difference is that between the ages of 10 and 15, boys change at a tremendous rate. Sometime in that period, they go through puberty and their testosterone levels shoot up, and they get more muscle. They can run faster, hit harder and throw a baseball with much greater speed," Metzl says.
But the change doesn't happen at the same time for every kid. Dr. Darren L. Johnson, chairman of Orthopedics for the Department of Sports Medicine at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, points out what anybody who ever chose up sides on the school lot already knows:
"There are some 12-year-olds with the physical development of 10-year-olds and some 12-year-olds who have the physical development of 14-year-olds. If you're selecting a team, you can use that to your advantage. You want to pick kids who are chronologically 12, but muscularly and skeletally, they are 14," says Johnson.
In some sports, like wrestling and peewee football, boys of similar size compete and age is discounted. So, if there's such enormous difference in size among players of the same age, should Little League baseball adopt that standard?
"Size is less of an issue than some people make it out to be," contends Dr. Eric Small, assistant professor of pediatrics and orthopedics at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City and a member of the committee on Sports Medicine and Fitness for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "There are some little, scrappy kids who can really throw the ball. Agility and eye-hand coordination is very important, and some small kids have that."
Likewise, Judy Young, executive director of the National Association for Sports and Physical Education, based in Reston, Va., doesn't think Little League needs to change its rules. "It's more than a matter of size. A kid may have a big frame, but his mental maturity may not be in concert with his skeletal dimensions. Coordination and intellectual development both come into play.
"Can we -- or should we -- try to make an absolutely equal playing field? Unless there is actual danger -- as there is in contact sports -- our response would be that it's all part of the game," she says.
But Metzl and Johnson both worry that the game is changing.
Johnson says, "Every single parent I meet thinks his 5-year-old is going to grow up and go pro, and they push their kids -- to weight train and use supplements. Kids don't just play
, they practice."
What To Do
Metzl is particularly concerned about supplement use. Puberty starts in boys when the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) in the brain sets off a chain reaction that triggers the production of another hormone, testosterone. In 1998, baseball's home-run record-holder Mark McGwire told the world he was using a supplement called androstenedione to improve his performance. Androstenedione, which stimulates the production of testosterone, is legal and might be OK for a full-grown man, but Metzl says the enormously popular substance is being used by boys where it can hasten puberty. He blames parents for letting this happen.
"I'm a total jock; I played Little League when I was a kid; I'm the biggest fan of winning athletes in the world. But these parents are off the deep [end]. Little League should be about learning healthy behaviors, and they're making it all about winning -- and that's totally wrong."
Want to see who won the Little League World Series? Click here for news and information.
And here's what Penn State University has to say about androstenedione, a supplement it advises people to avoid.
And Calgary Health Region talks about puberty in boys, as does About.com.
