Well, I think there is something there, that so many of these pitchers--Fergie Jenkins, Seaver, Carlton, McLain, Don Sutton and others--were born during World War II, just before the Baby Boom. Sports weren't as organized then. If you had asked to see some kid's birth certificate to let him pitch in a league, somebody would have cold-cocked you. That's my experience, anyway.

In a more loosely competitive environment, being a year or two older was probably a big head start. I'm sure you know this theory, or I guess it is a fact pattern, that hockey players born at a certain point in the year are like 10 times as likely to make the NHL as those born one month earlier. There is a cutoff birth date in youth hockey. A player born just AFTER that date is competing with kids who are 11 months younger, and 11 months is a HUGE advantage when you're talking about 7-year-olds and 8-year-olds. The kids who are "age-advantaged" get ahead of the group, they're recognized as the coming stars, and it just feeds on itself; they make the all-star teams, make the travelling teams, get the starting spots on the high school teams, get the college scholarships. The kids who are "age disadvantaged" never catch up. I think the same syndrome has been recognized in baseball players, particularly pitchers.

We all know that a lot of the stuff that I wrote in the 1980s was nonsense, but you have to remember that I proposed this "age advantage" theory for Sutton, Seaver, Carlton, etc. BEFORE any parallel advantage was established to exist in hockey. I was just spitballing an idea, but later research showed that a similar idea was probably true. So. . . I still believe that the "big kid" advantage probably explains this concentration of great pitchers born in that era.

Now if we can just explain why there were like 7 outstanding catchers born in 1947. . .