Baseball is More Hazardous Than Football! (Mr.Kunkle you'll like this one!)

To start off, this caught my eye because I know Mr.Kunkle and I share an interest of baseball. Baseball is a huge recreational activity in my family, and my cousin, my role model, actually just finished his first summer playing for the Madison Mallards, and I hope he can go even farther in time. But even with my great love for this sport, it seems that it is more dangerous than football is...my second favorite sport. Sunday night football seems to be doing less damage after the players retire than when baseball players do.

It all started when Grantland's Bill Barnwell established an informal survey about morality rates among professional football and baseball players. The results did very much surprise me, as well as for Mr.Barnwell. About 3,000 ex-football players who played a least five seasons between the years of 1959 and 1988 obtained a death rate of 12.8 percent; however, with a lessened number of about 1,500 baseball players, their death rate was at about 15.9 percent during the same era. I feel like when you watch a football game you are always going "ooh" and "ah" to all of the tough hits thrust upon one another, but with baseball it seems much more relaxed and rarely do you see a dramatic injury; it's the "gentleman's game". Football has always had the scare of concussions, so I don't understand how baseball has a much higher percentage?

The best part of this entire essay is the part where it states, "The health risks associated with playing football were being more than outweighed by the benefits of being a pro athlete-excellent training and nutrition, a good salary, top-quality medical care, and so on." People now days care more about the money and the fame, but what they don't realize, yet, is that they cannot have all of that when their dead. In my opinion, I think it is pointless to risk dying at such a young age for five years of "the good life". But quite frankly it is the "good life" that is getting them farther than being a professional baseball player their entire life.

The results of this survey may seem to be looking at cumulative "wear-and-tear" rather than acute injuries that are acquired throughout football season. A football star's career is much shorter too...a baseball star's career lasts almost 60 percent longer.

The argument that I agree with the most is that the use of chewing tobacco or snuff is lessening these baseball player's life. It was shown in a 2009 study that only .2 percent of NFL athletes use tobacco; clearly, that is way low compared to the 36 percent of Major League Baseball players. I think common sense should get someone the answers they need to know about the consequences of using tobacco.

This article really opened my eyes to see how even the smallest stereotypes can be reversed. Nobody saw it coming that baseball would kill more than football does, but now that we know the true facts it will just create more studies to find the exact reason why it does. So my advice...get out their and play ball while you still can!