Joseph Torg, Doctor Who Fought to Lessen Football Injuries, Dies at 88

Ms. Torg said in an email that her father most likely pursued orthopedics “because of his love of football and his own experience with athletic injury (concussion) in high school.”

“When he graduated medical school,” she said, “orthopedic surgery was the most sports-oriented field in medicine and the field that enabled him to treat athletes.”

After interning at San Francisco General Hospital (now Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center) from 1961 to 1962, Dr. Torg spent two years in the Army Medical Corps. Following his residencies at Temple University Hospital and Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children (now Shriners Children’s Philadelphia), he began teaching at Temple in 1968.

He soon became widely known. In 1970, he and Mr. Quedenfeld released a study that found conventional football shoes, with seven cleats each three-quarters of an inch long, were far more responsible for knee and ankle injuries than soccer shoes with 14 shorter cleats.

Three years later, he testified in a challenge in New Jersey to the rule that prevented girls from playing Little League baseball. At a hearing of the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights, Dr. Torg refuted claims by Creighton J. Hale, a Little League Baseball executive, that female bones were not as strong as male bones; in fact, he said, because girls matured earlier than boys, it was possible that their bones were stronger.

A hearing officer ruled that the rule prohibiting girls from participating in Little League in New Jersey violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws — a decision that helped lead the national Little League organization to let girls play the next year.

In 1974, Dr. Torg and Mr. Quedenfeld opened the Center for Sports Medicine and Science at Temple to treat players from colleges and local professional sports teams, as well as recreational athletes.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/sports/football/joseph-torg-dead.html