Rayno: Koskie finds peace of mind

[Parker Hageman]

The Star Tribune's Amelia Rayno catches up with former Twins third baseman Corey Koskie on his post-baseball life and the effects he experienced battling through his concussion. Great read.

[TheLeviathan]

I still proudly wear my Koskie jersey - my favorite Twins of the last 20 years. Glad to hear his life has been able to stabilize.

[StormJH1]

Terrific article, of course juxtaposed with the Strib's C.J. article about "Gosh, Julie Nelson of KARE11 boobs sure look bigger lately, don't they?" (Sorry. C.J. should not exist. I'm off topic here).

 

I feel really bad for a lot of these athletes who are now in their late 30's and early 40's (some of whom could still be playing) who dealt with serious concussion issues about 5-10 years before athletics and the general public finally began to understand how serious of a problem this was). I fully admit that I'm 31 years old, and has basically "learned" that a concussion was basically the most minor sports injury that you could actually miss time for. (In football, that was usually a week). Certainly, the damage wasn't permanent - you simply got your bell rung and needed a little time for the headaches to go away. If you were tougher, maybe you came back earlier than someone who was not as tough. Sadly, not only did I think that, I think that more or less the accepted view of the medical field until the mid-2000's.

 

It's getting pretty hard to ignore how wrong we were any longer. And it will probably take even longer for people to understand how concussions work in non-contact sports like baseball. The fact that there isn't even really an objective test for concussion really hits home for me. You can verify AIDS, cancer, a broken bone, or an ACL tear with testing - how do you tell how bad a concussion really is, or how long it will last? That's why I pay a little extra attention to everyone of Morneau's at-bats since he came back.