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.
