True baseball fans can't help but see comparisons of hallowed baseball metrics to standards in their own work environments. For a baseball fan who is a physical therapist, even something as seemingly dissimilar as research has selected accomplishments that mirror those of baseball statistics.
For a baseball pitcher, 300 wins is a threshold that has held distinction for years. In the last 59 years, only 10 pitchers have achieved 300 wins: only four since 1990. For physical therapists, publishing 300 peer-reviewed papers is an even rarer feat. The authors of a 2020 publication that looked at the productivity of physical therapist researchers found that approximately 10 active physical therapists out of 1,600,616 PTs had published 300 or more peer-reviewed papers.
If you like “probabilities”, baseball, or otherwise, then you will like this statistic: Two of the 10 active physical therapists with 300+ publications are employed at Duke: Dr. Chad Cook and Dr. Steven George. Both Chad and Steve (former baseball pitchers, themselves) are self-proclaimed baseball fanatics and both achieved this rare publishing accomplishment by taking different paths. Remarkably, across the more than 630 publications between the two, they have collaborated on only 11 papers. What are the odds of two physical therapist researchers from the same facility being in the top 10 in publishing productivity?
Astronomical.
In fact, the odds are like seeing two grand slams in one inning, a single player getting 9 hits in one game, or seeing 3 inside-the-park home runs in a single game. In baseball’s history, each of these amazing feats has occurred only once.
Chad spent 9 years as a clinician before being “called up” to academia, has worked with over 650 different authors, has specialized in database-oriented research, and has used crowd-sourcing methods to complete clinical trials. His first publication occurred in 1999 but it wasn’t until 2004 before he published more than 1 paper in one year. Since 2007, he has averaged 20 publications per year, which ironically, also has an association with baseball milestones, since winning 20 games a year as a pitcher is a notable feat.
Similarly, Steve spent 6 years as a clinician before his call up to a research-focused career. Before making the club in Durham his stops along the way included farm systems in Morgantown WV, Pittsburgh PA, and Gainesville FL. Each of these places contributed in important ways to developing his ability to conduct clinical research that helped improve the understanding of common pain conditions. Steve also benefited from excellent clinical and research coaching at each of these stops. His first publication was in 2000, and like Chad, he has frequented the “20-win club”; meeting or exceeding that mark 9 times since 2010.
So which pitcher with 300 wins do these faculty resemble? Chad Cook might be best represented by Warren Spahn a pitcher with 363 career wins, who because of military service, started pitching a bit later in life. Spahn was reliable, often toiled in anonymity, but improved with age. Steve George’s work might be reflected by someone like Greg Maddux, a pitcher with 355 career wins who earned the nicknamed “the professor” and “mad dog”. Known better for having good control and movement rather than velocity, Maddux was able to field the position well, while getting outs with groundballs over strikeouts.
Baseball is a game that hasn’t changed much in its 146-year professional history and that is one of the most alluring elements of the game: it’s easy to compare the stats of those who played 75 to 100 years ago to modern-day players. Unlike baseball, publishing is changing. Industry profits and the competitiveness in receiving funding have limited options for researchers; a challenge that will likely only increase. That said, we may not see two physical therapists, working for the same organization, reach the “300 club” for a very long time.
Take us out to the ball game with big congratulations to Drs. Cook and George!