MLB Father's Day: Love of baseball tops genetics

The Herald Scotland

8 hours ago

It's both the most obvious and yet oversimplified evaluation a baseball scout can make - a recognizable name leaping off the page, a player profile to dream on based on how far their father made it in the game.
And ostensibly, the Holliday family justifies those dreams: For the second time in four years, a Holliday lad will be picked at or near the very top of Major League Baseball's draft when Ethan is selected somewhere in the first five or so picks at the July 13 selection party.
Jackson, still just 21, is in his second year as a Baltimore Oriole and perhaps already on his way to his first All-Star Game. Ethan, while having to conquer several levels of minor league ball to join his older brother in a major league middle infield, could be a bigger and more powerful version of Jackson.
Both are carrying the legacy of their father Matt, a seven-time All-Star, a batting champion, a World Series winner who slugged 316 home runs over 15 years in the major leagues.
Genes to dream on, for certain.
Yet the story of baseball bloodlines will forever be a classic nature vs. nurture equation, and despite inherent advantages of growing up Holliday or Clemens or Bellinger, countless environmental factors will determine if the child's most important adult acronym, say, is OPS or CPA.
"It's nice to have the genes - my dad's a big guy and played baseball a long time," says Holliday, on pace for a 20-homer, 20-steal season in his first full season in the majors. "But I don't look like him and I just have the last name and he happens to be my dad.
"I think a lot of it has to do with growing up in the game and watching someone you want to be like, and that's what they do. So, that's essentially what me and my brothers wanted to do."
Indeed, the Holliday patriarch is built like an NFL linebacker - at 6-4, 240 pounds, he had both speed and power and at 45 still cuts an imposing figure when he's around a major league batting cage.
While Holliday was a slugging left fielder, his eldest sons are cut from a different template: Jackson is 6 feet and 185 pounds, while Ethan is already 6-4, about 200 pounds and projected to stick at shortstop long term.
Not exactly daddy duplicates from a physical standpoint.
"Yeah, it's nice having good genetics," says Kody Clemens, youngest son of seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens, and a versatile reserve for the Minnesota Twins.
"But the exposure is probably more important."
The scientific community generally agrees.
'Biology is really good at mixing things up'
It's been nearly a decade since Alejandro Lucia collaborated with renowned genomic professor Claude Bouchard - regarded as a godfather of genetics and exercise - on a 2016 study exploring the responses and adaptations of the body to exercise.
Lucia, a professor and researcher at European University of Madrid, worked with human patients and animals and extensively explored how genetics influence the body.
"We found, basically, nothing," says Lucia.
That's not to say genetics don't affect body types. Lucia says there is an "undeniable genetic influence" that he pegs at around 50% that determines whether a person's phenotype is better suited toward respiratory fitness or muscular makeup.
Humans, at their core, are endurance animals, he says. Yet what makes athletes great are almost exclusively influenced by environment, be it the preponderance of elite East African distance runners or, say, an elite travel baseball team from Texas.
"Is it the genes you have inherited from your father? Or is it the influence, the atmosphere?" says Lucia. "In the case of sports performance, we're not talking about a single phenotype. It's the combination of many phenotypes. What makes you a good basketball player? Is it strength? Is it skill? Is it motivation? It's many different things.
"It is probably the combination of too many factors. We tend to blame our genetics on too many things."
Certainly, genetics play some role in getting a child into the game. Stephen M. Roth, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland, has studied genetics and elements of skeletal muscle and athletic performance for more than 20 years.
Loosely, he pegs the chances of bestowing athletic genes on offspring at about 50%, though some factors have a higher likelihood of inheritance. Height, for instance, has closer to 80% inheritability.
"Most of these traits are remarkably complex. It's not just a single gene that's contributing and you either have it or you don't," says Roth. "It's going to be a lot of different genes, all contributing and the likelihood that at least some of those are passed down is probably pretty good. But certainly not all of them, in the exact pattern that either parent has.
"Biology is really good at mixing things up, and purposefully doing so."
Roth says certain psychological factors - competitiveness, say - have about a 20-30% likelihood of inheritability. Yet it's almost impossible for genetics to outkick an athlete's surroundings.
"When you see a given geographic group or set of families who are especially successful in a given sport, instead of thinking of genes I will think of the special environment of this particular geographic reason or this particular family" says Lucia. "The example, the inspiration they get from their parents.
"I will never be a great baseball player. But maybe my genetic makeup is not that different from the best baseball player in the U.S."
'The Clay Stare'
And sometimes the next generation quickly exceeds its predecessors.
Cody Bellinger didn't need much time to push the label "son of ex-Yankee Cody Bellinger" into the background. He hit 20 home runs in his first 51 major league games, and doubled his father's career total of 12 in his first 57.
No, Cody wasn't inheriting Babe Ruth's genetic profile. Yet growing up Bellinger - Clay was part of World Series-winning Yankees teams in 1999 and 2000 - was pivotal.
"You're in the batting cage, you're picking up baseballs, you're going out to batting practice and you just fall in love with it," says Bellinger, who won the 2019 NL MVP award and has a .760 OPS this season for the Yankees. "Moreso than other kids who don't have that opportunity. A huge blessing.
"I think just being around it, you just appreciate it and you love it and it's not forced. For me, I loved it."
That's one trait that can't be underestimated. The pressure of following in a famous father's footsteps can be immense. With no ceiling on travel ball and many ballplayer families residing in warm-weather climes, the potential for burnout is immense.
"It's almost like going into the family business. You have this, maybe stated, but unstated expectation that you could, or maybe should, be following in this person's footsteps," says Roth, the Maryland professor. "You have this unique opportunity to go into this particular business. I think the concern is, how many of these kids actually feel pressure to do it, but don't realize they may not want to do it?
"They may be good at it, but is this how they want to spend their lives? That can be really hard to disentangle. We see that following in the family business, too, where someone says, 'No, actually, I don't want to be a butcher.'"
The second-gen kids who made the big leagues tended to steer into it. Craig Biggio, the Hall of Fame second baseman for the Houston Astros, was already retired by the time his son Cavan was in high school.
So the elder Biggio took the coaching reins at Houston's St. Thomas High School, giving Cavan a potential double-whammy: A legacy to look up to, and the stigma that can come by being The Coach's Son.
Yet it turns out his teammates thought it was nifty having a coach who was two years from having a bust in Cooperstown.
"Because everybody loved having him, having a Hall of Fame guy," says Cavan, who is in his seventh major league season. "It was a professional environment from a high school level, which was really rare and cool.
"So when I eventually got to pro ball, it was already things I was doing from a young age."
Not that Dad can't be hard on the kid. Clay Bellinger also coached some of Cody's teams, preaching lessons Cody relies upon to this day, and also saying so much by saying virtually nothing.
"I was lucky enough that my dad was the coach," says Bellinger, drafted in the fourth round by the Dodgers in 2013, "but me and my friends had a little joke - if you didn't do something well, you'd get the 'Clay Stare.'
"He'd stare at you and you'd feel it. That you did something wrong. That was always something that we joked around with and that stuck with me - play the game hard."
'This was going to be for me'
Of course, having a ballplayer dad means having lots of famous uncles. Matt Holliday played long enough that Jackson can remember kibitzing in the clubhouse and on the field with the likes of Nolan Arenado and Aaron Judge.
Biggio recalls catcher Brad Ausmus as a "funny, witty guy," and appreciates the respect he was afforded from Astros such as Morgan Ensberg, Lance Berkman and Willy Taveras.
Josh Barfield, a four-year major leaguer and now the assistant general manager of the White Sox and son of Blue Jays legend Jesse Barfield, counted Rickey Henderson and Ken Griffey Jr. as de facto family members thanks to his father's longtime friendships with both.
As little kids and adolescents, they didn't go through the grind. But they got an up-close view of what it took to survive it.
"You watch the work every day - and go out and try to replicate what I watched for so long," says Jackson Holliday.
Sometimes, it's the only life they know.
"Kasey and I always talk about how we really didn't understand what there was in life besides being a baseball fan or baseball player," says Kody Clemens of his older brother. "Growing up, we knew we wanted to be the players.
"When (Roger Clemens) was in New York and in the tail end of his career in Houston - that was when I realized how good he was, why these people were coming to the stadium, why we were going to the stadium. From 5 to 10 years old was when I realized what was going on."
While some of the legacy ballplayers become elite - like Bellinger and Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. - or are burgeoning stars like the Hollidays, others are determined to stick.
Clemens has never played in more than 56 games since his 2022 debut and at 29 is enjoying his first taste of extended success with Minnesota, slugging six homers in 36 games after Philadelphia designated him for assignment in April.
Biggio is currently at Class AAA with Kansas City, after making the club out of spring training; he's with his fourth organization in the past two seasons.
It's plenty of time to ponder who makes it, who stays, and why.
"I think athleticism has a ton to do with it, but everybody in pro ball is athletic, even college baseball," says Biggio. "I more credit being around it as a young kid. For me, it developed a passion and a love and a want for what this was going to be for me."
Or, as Maryland's Roth puts it, "baseball is always in the environment. You have this almost constant presence. That's going to lead to expectations and opportunities for these kids."
And the cycle rolls along. As Bellinger glances about the Yankees clubhouse, a pair of young boys, baseball gloves in hand, tail behind assistant hitting coach Casey Dykes, like ducklings following their mother to the pond.
"There you go," he says as elementary-school aged Kash and Jett head out to the field, perhaps taking the tiniest steps toward draft day 2036.
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