Why are ballpayers so fat?

Who ate all the pies?, Or why are baseball players so fat?

It's possible that some of you in the US will have read or heard about some of the tragedies that have happened in soccer in Europe over the last 10 days. Earlier on in the week, at halftime in a game, a player called Clive Clarke, collapsed in the dressing room and had to have his heart restarted twice with a defibrulator. Clarke is 27 years old, a young fit professional and thnakfully he survied but will probably never play football again

A player in Sevile was not so lucky, he collapsed mid game last weekend and died in the dressing room.

Sport is littered with players suffering similer episodes, I am no doctor, but I presume that part of the reason for this is the strain that persistant training places on the heart. Throw in the seemingly gowing phenoman of Sudden Adult Death syndrome  and it's scary

So why are baseball players so fat?

I was in Phildelphia in June and one thing that caught my eye in a series V the Nationals was Dimitri Young. Now, I now this guy has had his issues in the past, but the sight of him waddling down to First Base was far from inspiring. His offical MLB stats on this website have him as 6ft 2 and 220lbs, using a standard body mass indicator calculator, this classifies him as overweight (and marginally short of being obese)

So that got me thinking, who else out there ate all the pies?(and if you have know anything about English soccer you'll know what that means). Here are some examples

I presume if I looked further, I'd find an awful lot more. And yes, I know Babe Ruth was not exactly skin and bones and it did him no harm, at least in his basball career. And yes, I know a batter might run no more then a couple of hunderd yards a game

However nowadays players are paid an awful lot of money to swat at a ball. The very least they could do is take care of their bodies and get themselves fit. How many base-hits does a team miss out of in a season simply because the batter is too fat to run fast enough? How many more could they get if the player could sprint like Tyson Gaye.?. How many injuries occur due to the extra weight a player carries?. Good hitters hit with the wrists and the shoulders(Di Maggio and Williams for example), not with the belly

The soccer players who collapsed this week were young healthy fit men so nothing is risk free. However, why do clubs invest millions in players and then futher increase the risk of them collapsing on the field by not enforcing simple standards of fitness?

So more six packs and less kegs please

And yes, I have a spare tire before anyone asks, but I'm not paid $10 million a year by my employers to do my job

Slan

Jerry