This article or section may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. See the talk page for details. (November 2008)

The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page.

This article should be divided into sections by topic, to make it more accessible. Please help by adding section headings in accordance with Wikipedia's style guidelines. (October 2009)

A journeyman or journeywoman is an athlete or professional sports player who is technically competent, but unable to excel. See Trevor Benjamin as an example of this.^[1]

Alexandra Allred^[1] 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^[2] 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^[3] 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^[4] 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^[5] 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^[6] 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 Whitington 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, DeGuardia^[7] 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".^[8]

Svinth^[9] 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.

[edit] References