A good baseball column at Slate (no, really!): why so many U.S.-born major leaguers are born in August and so few in July.
4 thoughts on “August Personages”
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A good baseball column at Slate (no, really!): why so many U.S.-born major leaguers are born in August and so few in July.
Comments are closed.
That’s fascinating actually.
I’m born in December though, so I need to come up with a new excuse why I didn’t make the majors.
I’m not even going to read it before I guess – something to do with an age limit cut-off for play at some organized level. August kids are the oldest in Little League and tend to dominate play, get more playing time, more coaches attention, etc.
July kids are the youngest, scrawniest kids at the end of the bench.
OK, now I am clicking the link.
I’m back, and could I just ask rhetorically, who’s the man?
FWIW, I was a November baby and there was no place in Little League for big, clumsy, slow kids like me.
Of course, now that my peers have caught up I am just medium-sized. And slow and clumsy.
Have a great weekend.
Apparently kids with good eye hand coordination are over-represented in baseball as well.
Basically, this guy noticed what observant parents have seen all along. All things being equal a kid with an extra year (or part there of) will do better. I saw it with my kid. His birthday is late June. When they changed the cutoff from 1 August to 1 May all of a sudden he went from pretty good to one of the best. Take a “B” student and make him re-do 5th grade and he would likely handle the material better.
The other end of this is the kid who is always playing up an age group. The challenge of facing better talent could help the player develop quicker. This may be more prevalent in youth football where age groups have weight limits as well.