Elsevier

Obesity Research & Clinical Practice

Volume 10, Issue 5, September–October 2016, Pages 610-612
Obesity Research & Clinical Practice

Research Letter
Overweight and obesity among Major League Baseball players: 1871–2015

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orcp.2016.09.003Get rights and content

Summary

Professional athletes provide high-profile role models of health and human performance. Increased body mass can be adaptive for human performance but also presents a health threat. This paper examines 145 years of data on body mass in 17,918 male professional baseball players in the United States at the time of their professional debut. Both height and weight at debut have increased over time. Controlling for age at debut, players debuting in the current decade were significantly more likely to be overweight or obese than at any time in history. The prevalence of overweight and obesity increased to approximately 70% and 10%, respectively, while normal weight prevalence decreased from approximately 60% to 20% during that time. The causes of these changes over the past 25 years are not clear although they coincide with the steroid era. These trends warrant further attention because of the potential for adverse long-term health consequences in this population and those who perceive them as role models for health and human performance.

Introduction

Professional athletes are assumed to be models of ideal health and performance. In some cases, increased body mass confers a competitive advantage. For example, overweight and obesity are more prevalent among football players than in the adult population, and can be adaptive for positions such as lineman [1]. Less is know about overweight and obesity in other populations of professional athletes. There is a perception that common body mass metrics, like body mass index (BMI), are not applicable for athletes who are believed to have a higher weight for height owing to substantial lean (versus fat) mass. As a result, elevated BMI becomes normative. Even with potential misclassification of fat vs. lean mass among professional athletes, athletes with BMI  30 have a higher rate of adverse health consequences [2]. Recent offensive leaders in baseball tend to have greater body mass and mean body mass has increased over time; however, less is known about trends in overweight and obesity among baseball players over time [3]. We describe trends in the prevalence of overweight and obesity among Major League Baseball (MLB) players over a 145-year period.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

Data were downloaded on March 18, 2016 from the publicly-available Lahman Baseball Database (http://www.seanlahman.com/baseball-archive/statistics/). Data available in this data set included age, height and weight (self-reported); other metrics of body composition were not available. We used SPSS v22.0 to calculate BMI for 17,918 male professional baseball players whose height and weight data was available and who had their professional debut from 1871 to 2015.

Results

Professional baseball players have become taller (r = 0.52, p < 0.01) and heavier (r = 0.57, p < 0.01) at the time of their debut. The prevalence of overweight has increased at the same time that normal weight has decreased (Fig. 1). A multinomial regression indicated that the odds of being overweight or obese were associated with both the decade of debut (χ2[3] = 41.53, p < 0.001) and age at debut (χ2[42] = 2500.89, p < 0.001). Controlling for age at debut, players debuting in the current decade were

Discussion

There has been a notable increase in the body mass of professional baseball players over the past quarter century. Their average BMI is still lower than the average American man; however, this gap has narrowed [4]. The crossover coincided with the steroid era; but, it is equally plausible that advances in sport science and nutrition (or other factors) led to improved training practices during this time.

Two caveats are needed. First, MLB does not systematically measure and record player height

Conflicts of interest

Dr. Conroy and Dr. Carnethon have no conflicts to declare. Dr. Wolin reports personal fees from Coeus Health and ScaleDown, outside the submitted work. In addition, Dr. Wolin has a patent for a software platform pending.

Author disclosures

DEC and MRC have no disclosures to report. KYW has equity in a weight management company.

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