A Call To Young Arms

At the of 10, I pitched my first baseball game.  By 16, I had pitched my last.  I was a product of a career cut short by tendonitis in the elbow of my throwing arm.  I recall coming home after high school games to the weak therapy of a heating pad which only isolated my pain.  The throbbing would be so intense that I was unable to move my arm enough to pick up a pencil to do my math homework.  I knew things were on their way down when a kid clobbered a 300 some-odd foot homerun off of the first pitch of my career.  It would be the only homerun I gave up all year, but as the season moved on, my stamina withered.  A 5 inning outing quickly turned into 4 innings then 3.  Before I knew it, I was moved to the role of closer.  By the end of the season, I was lucky if I could handle more than 1 innings worth of work.  My fastball steadily declined from the upper-mid 70s to the low 60s.  With only two games left in the season, I broke my left thumb and was done for the season. 

I couldn't figure out what happened and where I went wrong.  And then suddenly, it dawned on me: the years I had spent trying out speciality pitches wore out my arm in irreversible ways.  Essentially, I had taught myself to pitch. At 10 years old, I used what I had learned watching big league pitchers and playing video games.  That's like teaching yourself to drive without any real guidance.  A baseball players' arm is an instrument.  It must be treated in the same manner you would treat a violin. Push it too hard and you will break something. 

I recall having had a two-hour pitching clinic prior to my first season as a pitcher.  2 hours.  After those 2 hours, I logged countless innings, having no real idea as to how I should operate my machinery.  And I don't blame the coaches because these guys were my friend's dads who had volunteered to coach simply out of the goodness of their heart.  They knew nothing as to how to throw a baseball without damaging your arm. 

The training I missed out on as 10 year-old carried through to my final game as a high school sophomore.  My message is this: today's young arms are in desperate need of proper education.  When throwing a baseball, you are putting a valuable part of your body on the line.  Irreversible damage can be placed on young arms without proper instruction as to how to fire a baseball.  We need to make sure that not only do we make numerous mandatory clinics for those young kids who want to pitch.  On top of that, pitch counts need to enforced in order to assure that young arms do not tire out too easily.  Without this schooling, too many other kids will have their careers cut short just like me.