Journeyman (sports)

A journeyman or journeywoman is an athlete or professional sports player who is technically competent, but unable to excel.cite book|title=Atta Girl!: A Celebration of Women in Sport|author=Alexandra Powe Allred|pages=99|year=2003|publisher=Wish Publishing|id=ISBN 1930546610]

Alexandra Allred states that a journeywoman is "someone who has been counted out, told that she is wasting her time, told that she should cut her losses and move on to something more practical", but counters that negative picture by asserting that a "true journeywoman" is "someone who has heard all the nay-sayers, then headed toward her goal and, through her determination, proved her worth and taken her prize", giving Louise Ritter and Sue Horton as examples.

Journeymen players are usually distinguished from an élite or "star" player. Quirk and Fort [cite book|title=Hard Ball: the abuse of power in pro team sports|author=James P. Quirk and Rodney D. Fort|pages=70|year=1999|publisher=Princeton University Press|id=ISBN 0691058172] note that the concerns of journeymen players and superstars, with respect to contract and other negotiations, differ: Superstars are concerned with the preservation of their rights to be free agents, whilst journeymen players are concerned with issues such as league minimum salaries and player pensions. Fort [cite book|title=Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports|author=Rodney D. Fort|pages=xxxiii|year=1997|publisher=Princeton University Press|id=ISBN 0691015740] observes that this leads to conflicts between journeymen and superstars, such as (Fort's example) the 1995 attempt by a group of superstar players to derail the agreement between the NBA and its players' association. Holt and Mason [cite book|title=Sport in Britain 1945–2000|author=Richard Holt and Tony Mason|pages=88|year=2000|publisher=Blackwell Publishing|id=ISBN 0631171541] note that in football, golf, flat racing, snooker, cricket, and other sports there is a clear distinction in earnings between the few rich stars in each sport and the journeyman professionals. They state that snooker has "an élite of perhaps twenty players" and point to a distinction between high earning test cricketers with six figure wages and "the average county professional" (for whom they give Simon Hughes, who earned £50,000 in the whole of his twelve years in county cricket, as an example). Vamplew [cite book|title=Pay Up and Play the Game: Professional Sport in Britain, 1875–1914|author=Wray Vamplew|pages=122|year=1988|publisher=Cambridge University Press|id=ISBN 0521892309] describes how league cricket in the 1890s provided little attraction for star cricketers but was greatly attractive to journeymen players in county cricket, eventually forcing the counties to raise their conventional maximum wage, offer winter pay to more players, and expand the fixture lists.

O'Leary [cite book|title=Drugs and Doping in Sport: Socio-legal Perspectives|author=John O'Leary|pages=84|year=2001|publisher=Routledge Cavendish|id=ISBN 1859416624] notes as significant the fact that whilst star football players will be treated with lenience by clubs, for journeyman footballers the taking of recreational drugs usually terminates their careers. (He gives Roger Stanislaus and Craig Whittington as examples.) Clubs will regard it as worthwhile to wait for stars to become available for team selection after suspension or imprisonment, but not for journeymen.

In testimony to the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, DeGuardiacite book|chapter=Statement of Joe DeGuardia|author=Joe DeGuardia|title=Oversight of the Professional Boxing Industry: Hearing Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation|editor=John McCain|pages=46–47|year=1997|publisher=DIANE Publishing|id=ISBN 0756704278] states that becoming a journeyman is the fate of many professional boxers, and that a boxer will realize that he has become a journeyman "after about 10 years" in the profession. Journeymen boxers float "from promoter to promoter, or manager to manager, hoping to get placed as opponents in fights" by promoters, and making very little money. They will "fight all the time, anywhere, in order to make enough money to get by". In earlier testimony to the committee, it had been reported that some journeymen boxers regard themselves as existing in the sport solely as "a body for better men to beat on". [cite book|pages=70|title=Health and Safety of Professional Boxing: Hearings Before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation|year=1994|publisher=United States Senate]

Svinth [cite journal|title=Death under the Spotlight: The Manuel Velazquez Boxing Fatality Collection|author=Joseph R. Svinth|publisher=EJMAS|month=February | year=2004|journal=Journal of Combative Sport|url=http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/ejmas/jcs/2004/05-12/www.ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth_a_0700.htm] reports that the activities of journeymen boxers changed over the course of the 20th century, with journeymen of the 1920s fighting a couple of times per week and spending little time in the gymnasium, but journeymen of the 1990s fighting a couple of times per year and sparring in the gymnasium three or four nights per week.

The journeyman can, however, be quite valuable in the team sports context. While it is almost always economically non-viable for even the richest teams in sports without salary caps to have a roster made up fully of superstar players, and would likely not happen even with economic viability because of the lack of attention some players would end up getting, journeymen often make up a large part of a team. This is especially true in the context of baseball, where journeymen often make up large parts of a team's pitching staff and contribute crucially to a team's success. Many journeymen can be highly experienced, and often play a "utility" role to cover for injuries or tactical changes as required.

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