Colorado Rockies standout Todd Helton went into the baseball Hall of Fame yesterday, and score one for the parents of athletic children who resist the siren song of specialization. This one was for all of you who've said, "Nah, my kid's not gonna play AAU ball all summer every summer because he once hit two 3-pointers in a Biddy Ball game."
Good for you.
Because you know what?
Helton spent his summers playing baseball growing up. But he spent his autumns on the football field.
In fact, Helton played both football and baseball in college at Tennessee, Excelled in both. In the fall of 1994, he even started three games at quarterback for the Vols, completing 36-of-66 passes for 406 yards and two touchdowns. Then he got hurt, and a freshman replaced him/
That freshman's name was Peyton Manning.
Who's now in the pro football Hall of Fame.
And who attended his old Tennessee teammate's last game at Coors Field.
But back to the original point: Playing multiple sports as a kid is a positive good, not a negative bad, in the development of a young athlete.
It's why so many of the high school coaches the Blob encountered in its 38 years in the sportswriting business not only encouraged their athletes to play other sports, but in some cases insisted on it. Those coaches correctly surmised that doing so made them better football/basketball/baseball/whatever players. And they had decades of precedent to back them up.
The Blob saw it, too. Troy Lewis, for instance, Indiana's co-Mr. Basketball in 1984 and later a buckets star at Purdue, was also a terrific baseball player for Anderson High School. Rod Woodson was a world-class hurdler at both Snider and Purdue. And over at Wayne, Roosevelt Barnes was a three-sport star: Football, basketball and baseball.
Like Woodson and so many others from the Fort, he wound up playing in the NFL.
Look. Specialization works for some, no question. But it's hardly the only path to fame, fortune and even the Hall of Fame. Or even the best way, necessarily.
Today's plug for versatility.
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