12 | MONDAY, JULY 29, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION

Sports

Before every game, as he puts on his

catcher’s gear, Gary Sanchez silently

braces himself for the job’s inevitable

surcharge — the dings and dents and

body shots that require bravery, if not a

touch of masochism, to endure, night-in

and night-out.

“You can never be afraid back there,”

Sanchez said.

Absorbing punishing blows is part of

the catcher’s job, but nothing hurts as

much — and nothing causes as much

damage — as a foul tip that glances off

the hitter’s bat and goes straight into the

catcher’s mask, rattling the brain and

sometimes causing a concussion.

The trauma can last for a moment or a

few hours. In some cases, it can end a

career: the former St. Louis Cardinals

manager Mike Matheny, a four-time

Gold Glove winner as a catcher, retired

after a series of concussions in 2006. The

umpire Dale Scott did the same after

missing nearly the entire 2017 season

with head injuries.

And this month, Pittsburgh Pirates

catcher Francisco Cervelli hinted that

he, too, had reached a breaking point af-

ter a sixth documented concussion. He

suggested that he was likely to stop

catching (though he later walked back

those comments).

Those who have gone through it de-

scribe the experience in disquieting

terms.

“Your ears start ringing, you lose the

sense of where you are and then the

headaches start coming,” Tampa Bay

Rays catcher Travis d’Arnaud said. “I’ve

had back-to-back pitches get me,

straight on, and I couldn’t even stand af-

ter that. They had to take me out of the

game.”

Robinson Chirinos of the Houston As-

tros likened the impact to a thunderous

“boom.” It not only staggers a catcher,

he said, it leaves him wary of the next

pitch, which can heighten the risk of

long-term injury if it makes contact.

“You definitely don’t want another

foul tip right after you’ve had a bad one,”

Chirinos said. “You’re thinking, ‘Please,

not again.’”

That fear is not unwarranted. Head

trauma experts say the brain is expo-

nentially more susceptible to a severe

concussion after an initial blow. At

speeds of around 90 to 105 m.p.h., de-

pending on how hard a pitcher is throw-

ing and the force of a hitter’s swing, a

baseball can feel as devastating as a

punch from a heavyweight boxer.

“The cells are, in a sense, stunned,”

said Chris Nowinski, the chief executive

of the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

“You have this ongoing struggle for the

cells to get the energy level back to nor-

mal. It’s an intense time frame for about

five minutes.”

Umpires are just as vulnerable, espe-

cially the ones who set up in what they

sometimes call the “kill zone” — the

space directly over the catcher’s head or

over his right shoulder during a right-

handed hitter’s at-bat. That’s where um-

pires are most at risk.

“The moment you get hit, all you see

is white, like a bright light,” the former

umpire Jim Joyce said. “And believe me,

it hurts like hell.”

Scott, who had four concussions in the

last five years of his career, including

two in the final ninth months, agreed.

“The first thing is, it’s loud, it’s like an

explosion,” Scott said. “It’s like you al-

most go into shock. The last time it hap-

pened to me, my mind wasn’t on the next

pitch. Instead I was thinking, ‘Is the

next one the one that’s going to take me

out?’ That’d never happened to me be-

fore. That’s when I knew it was time to

get out.”

Unlike football or hockey players,

who can retreat to the bench for treat-

ment before returning to the game if

they are not seriously injured, a catcher

has only a few moments to decide if he

can continue. Dangerous as it might

seem, most do, falling back on a credo of

toughness and commitment.

“This is what you sign up for,” the New

York Yankees’ Austin Romine said, add-

ing: “A football player will tell you the

same thing — it’s part of the job. I’ve ac-

cepted it because I love being a catcher.”

After a particularly hard impact, a

team trainer might rush out and admin-

ister an impromptu concussion test,

asking what day it is or in what city the

game is being played. But a few seconds

is too small a window to properly diag-

nose a potential trauma.

There has been discussion among

Major League Baseball’s leaders about

someday introducing a free substitution

rule for catchers, according to a person

with knowledge of the talks who was not

authorized to comment publicly on

them. A new rule could allow a catcher

to leave the game for a set number of

minutes or innings for a medical exami-

nation, with the possibility of returning

to the field if the player is deemed

healthy enough.

Baseball’s current protocol has no

such rule, although it created a seven-

day injured list for concussed players in

2011, as well as mandatory baseline test-

ing in spring training. But so far catch-

ers receive no special privileges, despite

their peers’ sympathy.

In the moments after a foul tip colli-

sion, the hitter often shares a sense of

helplessness — and perhaps a twinge of

guilt, knowing their biggest swings are

responsible for redirecting the pitch into

the mask.

“I’ve done it to a number of catchers;

I’ve had them go down right in front of

me,” said Yankees outfielder Aaron

Judge. “It’s a terrible feeling. I try to

step out of the box, play with the dirt,

give them a little time, but there’s really

not much you can do. I’ll say to them,

‘Please tell me you’re O.K., talk to me,

say something.’”

The randomness of the effects also

complicates how catchers or umpires

deal with them. Experts say no two

blows to the head are the same. “A foul

tip in the first inning might not have any

effect at all,” said Dr. Josh Bloom, the

medical director of the Carolina Sports

Concussion Clinic. “But in the ninth in-

ning, depending on how fatigued and de-

hydrated a catcher is, the same foul tip

might cause a concussion.”

For extra protection, many catchers

are now using the Force3 Defender

mask, which uses a spring-cushioned,

shock-absorption system that reduces

the force of an impact. “It’s an improve-

ment for sure,” d’Arnaud said.

There is a small consolation, if it can

be called that: Because catchers take

blows straight-on and not in a rotational

swivel — like a boxer being hit in the

chin by a hook — the chances of long-

term brain damage seem to be reduced.

“It may be why you don’t see a lot of

punch-drunk retired catchers,” Nowin-

ski said.

Still, it takes a special breed to agree

to such punishment. The 6-foot-7, 260-

pound Judge is one who admittedly

could not.

“I could never be a catcher,” he said.

“With what they go through? No way.”

‘Not again’: Pain and fear of foul tips to the mask

BY BOB KLAPISCH

Philadelphia Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto’s mask was dislodged by a foul tip last

month. Blows to the head in rapid succession can be especially dangerous.

MARK J. TERRILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Even though he was 6-foot-6 by the time

he was 14 years old, when an aspiring

basketball star in Senegal picked up a

ball for the first time, his friends were

skeptical: In this soccer-mad region,

why bother with a ball you dunk, when

everyone else is kicking?

“My friends thought I was weird in

the beginning,” said the young player,

Mouhamed Lamine Mbaye, now 18 (and

6-foot-9), as he stood on the court of a

new basketball academy, the first to be

built by the N.B.A. in West Africa.

“Basketball was just a passion,”

Mbaye said. “But then I took it seriously

when I realized I could make it.”

In this sports-obsessed West African

country, it seems as though every va-

cant lot and dirt road doubles as an ad

hoc soccer field.

But as the deep-pocketed N.B.A. has

taken an interest in the region — and in-

fused a lot of cash — basketball is having

its moment here after years of dribbling

in soccer’s shadow.

The N.B.A. is planning a new league,

the Africa League, and has set up youth

training facilities — both shiny, perma-

nent facilities and temporary camps to

identify and hone new players across

the continent. American and Europe-

based recruiters have poured in, eager

to scout the latest talent, while glittering

stadiums have gone up, preparing for a

rush of new, high-end play.

With all this activity, coaches and

players, plus Senegal itself, are seeing

their second-fiddle sport in a new way:

as an opportunity.

It certainly was for Amadou Gallo

Fall, a Senegalese player who was dis-

covered at a local basketball camp by a

Peace Corps volunteer in the 1990s and

went on to play for the University of the

District of Columbia. Fall, formerly the

vice president of the N.B.A.’s Africa

branch, was named president of the Af-

rica League, which is scheduled to begin

play next year.

“The ingredients have always been

there in terms of talent and passion for

the game,” Fall said in an interview.

“There is a huge opportunity to create

something really authentically African

that could be a home for the tremendous

talent that exists.”

The idea, in part, is to strengthen the

pipeline of players to the N.B.A., but also

to create a robust basketball landscape

in Africa itself, and to elevate the sport

here to rival soccer’s status.

Along the dusty highway to the new

airport near Dakar, the capital, Sene-

gal’s basketball ambitions rise like an

emerald city above the expanse of red

sand. The green glass of the Dakar

Arena, a 15,000-seat basketball stadium

that opened this year, towers over a

landscape of half-completed construc-

tion sites.

The new arena, which also can double

as a volleyball and team handball sta-

dium, is to be the centerpiece of Di-

amniadio Industrial City. It is a new sub-

urb being built for $2 billion by the Sene-

galese government to ease traffic con-

gestion in the capital city 20 miles away.

An hour’s drive south, in the beach

town of Saly, there is another new court:

the N.B.A. Africa Academy. Built two

years ago, it is a training center for

promising players, ages 14 to 18, scouted

from across West Africa. The 21 current

students receive a high school education

and intensive instruction by former

N.B.A. players and others, preparing

them for futures in professional leagues.

On a recent evening, teenagers, in-

cluding Mbaye, dribbled across a court

so precisely waxed that visitors were in-

structed to walk around it, not across. It

is a far cry from the way Mbaye grew up

playing in Dakar, he said. Unable to af-

ford sneakers, he played in what he had,

Timberland boots.

Students arrive at the academy

packed with raw skill — in Senegal, par-

ticularly in Dakar, working out is a way

of life. But in a country where most peo-

ple would rather play pickup soccer

than pickup basketball, the students of-

ten have little experience.

“You have guys, they have never seen

a play drawn up, they don’t know how to

run an assist, they don’t understand the

language of basketball,” said Roland

Houston, the technical director of the

academy. It is run in partnership with

the SEED Project, a nonprofit youth em-

powerment organization founded by

Fall. “In a way, that’s good,” Houston

said. “They’re not burned out on the

game. They’re full of joy.”

Basketball has been played interna-

tionally in Africa since the 1960s, under

the auspices of the International Bas-

ketball Federation, known as FIBA. But

in international play, African countries

have not cracked the upper echelon:

Senegal’s men’s team is 37th out of 165 in

the FIBA world rankings. While there

have been a handful of stars from West

Africa in the N.B.A., such as Hakeem

Olajuwon of Nigeria, the number of

players from this part of the world has

remained low.

“I have asked myself, why wasn’t

there a bigger surge of Africans in the

N.B.A.?” Houston said of the academy.

“But if you don’t see it, you don’t believe

it, you don’t know that maybe, ‘I can

play in that league.’ And I think that’s

been a big gap, the guys just not know-

ing that, ‘Hey, you can do it too.’”

On a recent scouting trip in May, Mau-

rice Johnson, a New-York based recruit-

er for ASL Sports Group, a sports re-

cruiting agency, flew to Dakar to tour lo-

cal clubs, on the hunt for future N.B.A. or

N.C.A.A. stars. At a scrimmage held un-

der the shadow of the gold-tipped mina-

ret of a mosque, Johnson watched in-

tently as players were brought before

him. Their coaches rattled off details like

wingspan and height in Wolof and

French though a translator.

Any potential recruits Johnson identi-

fied would have a long, uncertain jour-

ney ahead of them, he said.

For some, that would include possible

placement with American families in

the United States, to finish high school

and cultivate their game. For a select

few, the influx of recruiters offers the

chance of a lifetime. But professional ca-

reers are not guaranteed, and exposés

have revealed the abandonment of play-

ers in the United States by unscrupulous

recruiters.

The crumbling national stadium in

the heart of Dakar seems to illustrate

how much more is needed to elevate the

game and the players in Senegal. Inside

the Marius Ndiaye arena, faded pictures

of the handful of Senegalese players

who went on to the N.B.A. hang from the

walls.

Seated beside the dimly lit court on a

recent Sunday, Ndeye Awa Niang, a

camp counselor, watched a game from

the chipped, greenish bleachers. Niang,

30, once aspired to play professionally.

But there are few opportunities to earn a

living in the game; most players are un-

paid. “You have some opportunities and

talented players here,” she said. “But at

the end of day, it’s a matter of means.”

Assane Badji has been the operations

manager of one of Senegal’s main

teams, the Dakar Rapids, and for the

Senegalese national team. Today he

does the same job for the N.B.A. Acad-

emy. It is a new world of air-conditioned

practices, crisp uniforms and tour buses

for away games — the perks of profes-

sional sports that not long ago only a

lucky few Senegalese experienced with

careers abroad.

“This league will have a positive im-

pact on the players because they will no

longer just dream of going abroad,”

Badji said courtside, over the noise of

players doing layup drills. “Instead they

will stay, dream of playing in a big com-

petition here, and value themselves.”

From left, the N.B.A. Africa Academy in Saly, Senegal, where players receive nearly professional-grade treatment and instruction; the locker room at the academy; the academy’s technical director, Roland Houston, with Mouhamed Lamine Mbaye, an 18-year-old player.

N.B.A. pushes into West Africa

SALY, SENEGAL

An infusion of cash aims

to raise basketball’s status

on a soccer-mad continent

BY SARAH MASLIN NIR

Players practicing at the N.B.A. Africa Academy, which is part of an initiative by the league to expand the game in Africa and strengthen the pipeline of players to the N.B.A.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JANE HAHN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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