It used to be considered acceptable to find young boys with good voices and castrate them so their voices would never change.
At some point, society decided that we weren't going to do that any more, even though it meant that the "castrato" parts in operas could no longer be properly sung (there was near-universal agreement that the purity and power of a castrato's voice could not be matched by anything else).
Now, we're not castrating these kids, but we are sending a lot of them into adulthood with physical problems (fucked-up joints, e.g.) and a socially-impoverished childhood.
Maybe accepting a slightly-lower baseline level of professional baseball skill would be a reasonable tradeoff to avoid that?
Edit: the same holds true for gymnastics, tennis, etc., of course -- any sport that requires that level of dedication from a young child. I don't mean to drag baseball in specific.
> It used to be considered acceptable to find young boys with good voices and castrate them so their voices would never change.
> At some point, society decided that we weren't going to do that any more, even though it meant that the "castrato" parts in operas could no longer be properly sung
Well, castrating kids to preserve their high voices is out, but castrating kids is very much back in.
At some point, society decided that we weren't going to do that any more, even though it meant that the "castrato" parts in operas could no longer be properly sung (there was near-universal agreement that the purity and power of a castrato's voice could not be matched by anything else).
Now, we're not castrating these kids, but we are sending a lot of them into adulthood with physical problems (fucked-up joints, e.g.) and a socially-impoverished childhood.
Maybe accepting a slightly-lower baseline level of professional baseball skill would be a reasonable tradeoff to avoid that?
Edit: the same holds true for gymnastics, tennis, etc., of course -- any sport that requires that level of dedication from a young child. I don't mean to drag baseball in specific.