By Mark Farmer
Baseball
intertwines with American history
and culture as indelibly as any icon
we have. Although it now reaches
fans mainly as a slickly packaged TV
product, it somehow retains its
pageantry and romance. It is a sport
where—still—an upstart Arizona
Diamondbacks team can play David to
the Goliath power of New York
Yankees, as in the dramatic 2001
World Series. But, down on the
field, it is also a sport that puts
its players through a grueling,
daily grind for six months.
Just listen to Diamondbacks second
baseman Jay Bell, who scored the
winning run in Game 7 of last year’s
Championship Series: “My job for the
last 17 years has been to run as
fast as I can and then, all of a
sudden, just jump on the ground.
Sooner or later, that’s going to
catch up to you.”
Bell and teammate Steve Finley, a
center fielder for the club, (shown
above) took some time out from
spring training to talk about the
rigors of the sport and how their
chiropractor helps keep them
game-ready.
Finley, a two-time All-Star and
five-time Gold Glove winner who is
starting his 14th year in the
majors, believes chiropractic is a
natural fit in a sport where
incremental performance counts.
“Baseball’s a long season. Little
things, over the course of a lot of
games, can mean a lot toward the end
of a season,” he explains. “The
difference between hitting .300 and
.280 is maybe just 10 or 12 hits a
year. You break that over the course
of a season, and it’s not that much.
The more you can feel better for
games, and feel like you’re working
at a higher level, the better chance
you have for success.”
Combating Wear and Tear
Finley,
Bell and most of the other
Diamondbacks, along with manager Bob
Brenly, turn to Scottsdale-based
D.C. Alan Palmer for help to combat
the wear and tear of the season.
“Baseball’s a lot of low back
(problems),” Dr. Palmer says. “That
makes sense if you think about
it—how their activity with swinging
the bat at high velocity, high
force, in one direction over the
other would eventually create a
breakdown. These guys have been
doing that since they were four or
five years old, and it takes a
toll."
Bell, who has two All-Star Game
visits, a Gold Glove award and a
Silver Slugger award in his 17
years, concurs. “You have constant
torque being generated,” he says.
“We’re constantly spinning to our
left or right.”
Prior to this year’s spring
training, Bell sought out Palmer two
or three times each week for several
weeks.
“All of last year, I had back pain
and it specifically dealt with the
L4 vertebra,” he explains. “I needed
to make sure that my muscles
remembered what normal alignment was
all about. I hope that it will allow
me to play this season pain-free so
that I can choose—one way or the
other—whether I want to retire or
keep on playing.”
Finley cites the impact of travel as
a contributing factor to spinal
problems.
“When you go on the road, you’re
sleeping in different beds with
different pillows, and my neck seems
like it gets out of whack,” he says.
“It’s subtle stuff, stuff that maybe
a lot of people wouldn’t even
recognize, but I know through my
experiences it can be very
detrimental, especially to the way
the rest of your body works. Your
spinal cord starts at the top, and
if it’s restricted, it’s going to
affect the rest of your body. I’ve
really found that to be true.”
Finley usually visits Palmer’s
office once per week to deal with
the aftermath of back surgery he
underwent in November 2000.
“I ran into a wall for a second
time, and it wedged a bulge
underneath the nerve,” he said.
“Once I got to that point, surgery
was inevitable. I have an SI
(sacroiliac) joint and ilium that
will get locked up, and [Palmer]
gets it freed up for me.”
Palmer says he uses a diversified
technique that incorporates
extremity adjusting, contract/relax,
proprioceptive neuromuscular
facilitation and myofascial release.
“Really, what I do is to try to
balance the whole kinetic chain from
the ground up,” he says.
Finley appreciates the approach:
“There are times I go into Dr.
Palmer’s office and he says, ‘You
look great. There’s not really a
whole lot to do,’ and that’s the way
I believe chiropractic should be. It
shouldn’t be, every time you go in
there, ‘Let’s adjust every part of
your body.’ Dr. Palmer’s never been
that way. If you don’t need
something, he doesn’t do it."
While not officially the team
chiropractor—he bills Major League
Baseball’s insurance for his
services—Palmer has, over time,
gained gradual admittance to the
inner sanctum of sports health care,
the training room. Early on, at
practices, he had to adjust the
Diamondbacks in the visitors’ space.
Palmer suggests that the
Diamondbacks organization is more
accepting of chiropractic than some
clubs, and Finley agrees.
“Our
doctors and medical staff are very
forward-thinking, and that helps to
break down a lot of barriers that
have been there before,” the center
fielder said. “Our bottom line for
our whole medical staff is to make
sure that the players are healthy
and on the field playing, and if it
takes different methods to do that,
so be it.”
Ensuring Quality
Chiropractic Care
Even before hooking up with the
Diamondbacks, Palmer had, for many
years, adjusted the San Francisco
Giants during their spring training
in Tucson. This relationship led to
the founding of the Chiropractic
Association for the Elite and
Professional Athlete (CEPA), and
ultimately to Palmer’s association
with the Diamondbacks.
The Giants’ head athletic trainer at
the time, Mark Letendre, and Palmer
co-founded CEPA in 1995 to integrate
chiropractic into professional
sports and build a network of
practitioners to call on. In 1998,
Palmer sent the Arizona team
information about CEPA and used
Letendre as a reference. He soon
found himself adjusting
Diamondbacks.
“CEPA started out as a certification
program,” Palmer explains. “Mark
wanted us to educate the doctors
about certain standards and
protocols, and how to prevent
chiropractors from stepping on toes,
and how to build relationships with
athletes and trainers and the team
medical staff.”
“I’m a guy who believes if you bring
a problem to the table, you also
bring at least one or two
solutions,” Letendre said. “My
solution was that we form this
association so we could have some
kind of quality assurance and
continuity of care and a network
together so I didn’t have to call a
million chiropractors to find the
right one when I needed immediate
care.”
The “continuity of care” concern
figured large in the birth of CEPA.
The fragmented nature of the
chiropractic profession left many
head trainers wary of allowing
chiropractors entry into players’
health care.
Palmer says baseball trainers’
opinion of chiropractic was: “Until
you get your act together, we don’t
want to play your politics and
create relationships with some of
you and offend others. We don’t know
what the heck’s going on, so we’d
rather not talk to anybody.”
“CEPA was born out of frustration,”
Letendre says.
Palmer
diligently keeps chiropractic
politics out of CEPA, focusing on
finding common ground among the
profession’s many philosophies for
the good of the athletes.
“Our goal is to create standards and
protocols that all the doctors will
agree to adhere to,” he points out,
“so that we can go to the teams who
aren’t using chiropractic and say,
‘Here’s what we’re about and here’s
what our mission is.’ And we’ll work
within the bounds that you’re
comfortable with. Even if it’s a
conglomeration of different
chiropractic belief systems and
associations, at least we’re all on
the same page with regard to
treating athletes."
Working Within A Framework
Indeed, CEPA eventually diverted
from its certification role and is
focusing more on how to work within
the professional sport structure,
not only in terms of chiropractic
care, but also big league etiquette.
“Let the colleges and organizations
handle the technique side, and we’ll
continue organizing the
chiropractors to work in team sports
and educating the trainers and
medical staff about the benefits of
using chiropractic,” Palmer said.
“We’ll teach them how to get in with
teams, and once they get their foot
in the door not to screw it up for
themselves. And how to communicate
with the trainer and the medical
staff.”
Dr. John Downes, head of the Sports
Chiropractic Department at Life
University, has taken all of the
CEPA modules, and as a result, he
has worked with the Diamondbacks
when they have visited Atlanta to
play the Braves and has provided
care for big league umpires.
“(The modules) help chiropractors
focus on what their strength is,
which is adjusting,” said Downes,
who runs through some of the
pointers he picked up in CEPA
seminars:
DO establish professional
communication with the head trainer;
demonstrate awareness of how the
medical system works; and stick to
adjusting.
DON’T bring cameras or family
members; don’t ask for autographs,
and don’t stray outside chiropractic
into nutrition, acupuncture, massage
or other modalities.
Both
Letendre and Palmer stress that the
D.C. has to remember who’s in charge
of health care with the teams.
“The gatekeeper is the person that’s
already in charge, be it the
athletic trainer or the team
physician. (Chiropractors) are
merely going to be there to add to
the tool chest,” Letendre said.
Clearly the potential rewards are
colossal if chiropractors gain
access to elite sports. Considering
the stratospheric sums riding on an
athlete’s performance, the desire to
lengthen careers and the constant
threat of injuries, it’s hard to
imagine a more fertile ground for
the profession to flourish.
Letendre, who now heads a
health-care program for umpires,
notes the need and the size of this
segment of sports. “Umpires or game
officials have to be athletic to be
on the field, so it behooves us to
give them functional wellness,” he
said. “We’re just beginning to break
through to a new domain, but if you
look at the population I’m dealing
with now, for every athletic event
in the world there’s at least one
game official. The numbers become
staggering.”
International sports represent a
sizable market, as well. Toward that
end, CEPA recently gathered with
similar groups and formed the United
States Sports Chiropractic
Federation (USSCF) to provide care
to international teams and athletes
attending events in the United
States.
Downes, representing the
International Chiropractors
Association, serves on the board of
the USSCF, which he describes as a
mechanism, much like the CEPA, “to
find out who’s really going to be a
positive presentation of
chiropractic and is able to follow
directions from an organization.”
CEPA and its counterpart groups
still face challenges. Even with a
chiropractic devotee like Bell, for
instance, acceptance is not
complete.
“Alan has been very consistent over
the last several years, coming in
and helping especially some of the
older guys get through some tough
times during the course of the
season,” he says. “I’m not saying
that chiropractic care is not good
for younger players as well, but it
seems to be, at least from what I
have seen, from an older player’s
standpoint it is much more necessary
than when we were younger.”
Would Bell use a CEPA network doctor
as Finley does? “I’m a little
apprehensive, about that simply
because I trust Alan. It’s not so
much a fear factor. It’s just that I
know that he knows what’s going on
with my body.”
Finley, on the other hand, holds a
degree in physiology and once
considered chiropractic as a career,
even getting accepted at Logan
College. But the allure of baseball
was too strong. He was introduced to
chiropractic as a 17-year-old while
playing summer league American
Legion ball. His coach, who was a
chiropractor, helped the young
ballplayer with an injury.
With this background, he is
well-positioned to stump for
chiropractic, but he is quick to
point out the obstacles.
“If guys are curious or have
different ailments, I’ll make
suggestions, but guys are pretty
much set in their ways a lot of
times and sometimes it takes
something drastic to change them,”
Finley says. “There are guys who
start going in there, and they start
realizing the benefits of it. They
might not realize why, but they keep
going back.”
An “Awesome Experience”
If Bell falls somewhere in the
middle in terms of acceptance, a
total convert may be Palmer’s most
famous patient, San Francisco
slugger Barry Bonds, who became the
all-time season home run king in
2001.
In 1997, Bonds slipped on some
stairs and injured his hip and low
back. After receiving adjustments
from Palmer, he told reporters, “I
feel 100 percent better. I saw my
chiropractor.”
“He’s really in tune with his body,
and when he’s off, he feels it,”
Palmer says of Bonds. “Through our
network, we set up a visit from a
chiropractor at the beginning of
every away stand. Before that first
game, we have a chiropractor come in
and work on Barry.”
With commitments to CEPA, the USSCF,
his practice, professional sports
teams (including the NHL’s Phoenix
Coyotes), and his family, Palmer has
all but given up his own sport,
natural bodybuilding. He has won 30
first-place titles, including the
1996 Forever Natural Championships,
the 1996 United States Natural
Championships and his division at
the 1996 Natural Universe. He still
works out, but he hasn’t competed
since 1996.
In a sense, establishing CEPA’s
network of doctors has relieved him
of the need to go on the road with
the team, which he rarely does.
“I have four children, and I do not
want to travel,” Palmer says. But,
of course, he made an exception for
the 2001 World Series, traveling to
New York for games three, four, and
five. But the big payoff for the
grueling season was the championship
win back at home.
“It was an awesome experience,” he
says. “I have to pinch myself
sometimes to make sure I’m awake,
because I’m so fortunate to get to
do this.”
As he began to work with the players
in spring training this year, he
relates their attitude coming off
the world championship into a new
season this way: “They talk about
how short the off season seemed, and
then they say, ‘Yeah, isn’t it
great?’”
Finley’s message to any doubters
about the team this year clearly
reveals his regard for fitness:
“Everybody last year labeled us old
and over the hill, and had no
chance, and we won the World Series.
Everybody’s just one year older, and
the way we keep ourselves in shape,
it’s not that much.”
