Abstract
The aim of this study is to clarify factors related to premature death among Japanese professional baseball players by a case-control analysis. The subjects are two matching groups of 622 Japan Professional Baseball (JPB) league players, those deceased and those surviving. Cases and controls are matched by birth year. All players debuted on the first string between 1934 and 2003, and are listed in The Official Baseball Encyclopedia of Japan. To compare means and frequencies of characteristics between deceased and surviving groups, t-tests and chi-square tests were used. A logistic regression analysis was assessed contributions of each independent variable on death. Significant differences between deceased and surviving players were observed in this study; deceased players had higher body mass indexes and longer careers. Furthermore, logistic regression analysis confirmed that body mass index and career length were statistically significant determinants of death for baseball players. This is the first report to examine factors of death for professional baseball players except employing data attained from Major League Baseball.
Highlights
For the general population, playing sports presumably contributes to longer life and better health [1,2,3]
The present study suggests a higher body mass indexes (BMI) and longer career length as factors related to death among Japan Professional Baseball (JPB) players
Sporting activity is generally expected to contribute to longevity, a long career is one of factors that lead to premature death for this specific group of athletes who assume sports as a professional occupation
Summary
For the general population, playing sports presumably contributes to longer life and better health [1,2,3]. For professional athletes, evidence relating longevity to their sporting activity is equivocal [4,5]. In contrast to studies of whether professional sports affect longevity, there are few studies what factors are associated with premature death among professional athletes [8]. The Japan Professional Baseball (JPB) League, established in 1936, has over 70 years of history [10]. It provides an official database from which to examine some of factors associated with premature death because it has a history of detailed statistics. JPB data are the basis for this study of factors related to death among professional baseball players
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