Baseball Blazing the Trail of Individul Differences

                            

My Dad often told me the story of Major League Baseball’s Eddie Gaedel of the 1951 Saint Louis Browns and it can be applied to Special Education Law studies on three levels because it is a tale of an individual with special challenges, it emphasizes the notion that such individuals confront the mainstream with a requirement of focused approaches to their needs, and it demonstrates that those bold enough to assert their demand for civil rights can produce changes in the rules of the system.

At the age of twenty-six, Eddie Gaedel stood three-feet, seven-inches tall and weighed sixty-five pounds (McKenna, 2009); certainly under the average height and weight for men throughout recorded history. A man of such diminutive stature surely had to endure all the psychological and physical challenges associated with navigating in a world universally designed for much larger people.

The interesting thing about baseball is that a major component of the game is tailored to the needs of the individual. Specifically, the strike zone which is defined as: “...that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the kneecap. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter’s stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball”, (Major League Baseball Official Publication, 2011, p.22). Certainly Eddie Gaedel’s official strike zone was much smaller than the average player’s and presented almost impossible target for a pitcher to hit.

Saint Louis Browns’ owner Bill Veeck was a businessman with a flair for entertainment and as a promotional stunt he hired Geadel to jump out of a birthday cake commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the American League between games of a weekend double-header. During the second game Geadel, wearing the number 1/8 on a uniform borrowed from the team’s bat boy, was sent in to pinch hit. The umpire protested but the Browns’ manager produced a valid contract which was filed with the league’s office late on a Friday so that it would be summarily approved before it could be scrutinized. After viewing the contract the umpire continued the game, and of course Eddie was awarded a base-on-balls as the wildly amused pitcher could not offer any strikes to such a narrow target, (McKenna, 2009).

This event caused a change in the rules of major league baseball such that all players’ “...contracts must now be approved by the Commissioner of Baseball before a player can appear in a game”, (Sports Grind Entertainment, 2009). The bold publicity stunt by Bill Veeck in the guise of a yearning for equality of opportunity caused a change in the rules of Major League Baseball.

Ironically, it was the pitcher in the story who resided in mainstream society, yet was required to operate in a restrictive environment as his target was reduced to a zone of merely one and one-half inches of height, seventeen inches of width, while throwing a ball with a diameter of three inches to a crouching Eddie Gaedel (McKenna, 2009). This story strikes home (pun intended) the notion that people aren’t disabled, rather environments are disabling.

The application of this story to the current state of American education connects the concept of a free and appropriate education for all students allowing zero rejections, with that of equality of opportunity for all Americans regardless of circumstance.

The battle for students with disabilities in the field of education is that they receive a free and appropriate education according to their unique needs in the least restrictive environment available in the instruction service continuum ranging from a descending order of: “...Regular class only...Special educator consultative...Co-teaching or collaborative teaching...Resource...Self-contained...Hospital or home bound...Special day school...Residential placement...” (Hulett, 2009, p. 109). This environment is to be determined by a team comprised of the student, her/his parents or guardians, a special education teacher, a regular education teacher, a representative of the Local Education Agency, and other persons with a direct interest in the student’s evaluation, education, and functional development. This team then creates an Individualized Education Program (IEP) which guides the actions of the educators and must include several major components such as the present levels of the student’s performance, both annual and measurable academic and functional goals which address the student’s specific needs, a mechanism for reporting the student’s progress towards those goals, provisions for accommodations, modifications, and support services in the quest to achieve those goals, both the level of restriction from the general education environment and related services if required, a statement of the type of participation in both  state and school district assessments, a statement of both  the frequency and duration of services, and a statement of services for transition into mainstream society, (Hulett, 2009).

In summary, every American student is entitled to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment possible. If the student has special needs then this is to be accomplished by the efforts of a team assembled to create an individual education program for students with special needs.

These rights have been established by the American legal system via the avenues of Constitutional law using Article 1, and both the Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments, statutory law using Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the Individuals With Disabilities Act, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and the No Child Left Behind Act, regulatory law which develops regulations associated with statutory laws, and finally case law which emerges from court decisions that interpret detailed meaning through arguments by aggrieved parties such as the Board of Education of Hendrick Hudson Central School District v. Rowley Supreme Court decision that interpreted the vague term ‘appropriate’ as being associated with a student’s specific educational and functional needs, (Hulett, 2009) .

In my opinion based on both observation and personal experience, many parents/guardians of children with high incidence disabilities seem weary by the time the student is in high school; having sat through proper yet lengthy IEP meetings during elementary and middle school settings. As long as the student is passing and progressing, then they seem satisfied that their child is receiving adequate services. It is the parents/guardians of students with low incidence disabilities who appear more involved and fight hardest for their children’s rights because they understand that their offspring need skills to survive after they are sent into mainstream society.

We can afford the equality of opportunities to teach skills to our students, but it is up to them to apply their education. Skills are important in both society and baseball. Even though Eddie Gaedel was employed as a publicity stunt in 1951, baseball accepted both him and the skill sets of other players with unique challenges such as Pete Gray who lost an arm in a childhood accident yet both enjoyed a successful career in Major League Baseball as an outfielder for the Saint Louis Browns in 1945, (Historic Baseball, n.d.) and served as an inspiration to disabled soldiers returning from World War II.  Another shining example of baseball’s acceptance of people who rise above their challenges is Jim Abbot who was born with one hand yet led the United States baseball team to a gold medal in the 1988 Summer Olympics and pitched a no-hitter as a New York Yankee in 1993, (Biography of Jim Abbott, n.d.).

Through the decades of both crafting legislation and deciding court cases involved with individuals with disabilities, our Great American Past-time has always been in the background leading the way to acceptance of both individual differences and individuals with disabilities. I expect that that baseball will continue to do so through the twenty-first century and beyond, because the game is never really over until the final out. Play ball!

References

Biography of Jim Abbott. (n.d.). Jim Abbott biography. Retrieved from
        http://www.jimabbott.info /biography.html#Anchor-Ji-3003

Historic Baseball. (n.d.). Bringing baseball history to center field. Retreived from
         http://www.historicbaseball.com/players/g/gray_pete.html

Hulett, K. (2009). Legal aspects of special education. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson  
        Education, Inc.

Major League Baseball Official Publication. (2011). Official baseball rules (2011 ed.).
        Retrieved from http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/downloads/y2011/Official_Baseball_Rules.pdf

McKenna, B. (2009). The baseball biography project: Eddie Gaedel. Retrieved from
        http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=2661&pid=4810

Sports Grind Entertainment. (2009). The Eddie Gaedel story: Tonight on MLB network.
        Retrieved from http://www.sportsgrindent.com/blog/the-eddie-gaedel-story-tonight-on-
        mlb-network/