Library's review
Passan, a longtime sportswriter most recently for Yahoo Sports, spent three years learning everything he could about baseball pitchers, and more specifically, the throwing arms of baseball pitchers. A great pitcher commands enormous salaries, and this despite the fact that serious elbow injuries
The most notorious pitching injury is a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), which is located in the elbow. The surgery to replace the UCL, usually with a tendon from the player's own arm or leg, or from a cadaver donor, is known colloquially as "Tommy John surgery" after the first pitcher to ever have the procedure done. John went on to pitch successfully for many years after the surgery, and the surgery has been refined and developed to the point where it has come to see almost routine. Passan makes a convincing case that the high rate of success has had the perverse effect of disincentivizing teams from trying harder to find a way to prevent the injury. And the success rate, along with the growing tendency for young players to play baseball all year around, has led to an explosion of players as young as 12 or 13 having what is still major surgery, with a recovery window of 12-24 months.
Passan does a great job of demystifying the medical and biomechanical aspects of what exactly happens within a pitcher's body and arm when they throw a pitch. And while he never uncovers a "magic bullet" of training or predictive diagnosis that could keep pitchers from blowing out their elbows, he follows up on some promising research developments into the problem, almost all of it being done outside of professional baseball itself. It's hard to believe in an era when the Cubs happily agree to pay 32-year-old Jon Lester $155 million over six years that they aren't trying harder to protect such an outsized investment, but the evidence is right there in Passan's fascinating book.
Show More
are as common for pitchers as houseflies at a garbage dump. Given the enormous amounts of money at stake, Passan wanted to find out what MLB is doing to figure out how and why pitchers get hurt, and how those injuries might be prevented. The most notorious pitching injury is a torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), which is located in the elbow. The surgery to replace the UCL, usually with a tendon from the player's own arm or leg, or from a cadaver donor, is known colloquially as "Tommy John surgery" after the first pitcher to ever have the procedure done. John went on to pitch successfully for many years after the surgery, and the surgery has been refined and developed to the point where it has come to see almost routine. Passan makes a convincing case that the high rate of success has had the perverse effect of disincentivizing teams from trying harder to find a way to prevent the injury. And the success rate, along with the growing tendency for young players to play baseball all year around, has led to an explosion of players as young as 12 or 13 having what is still major surgery, with a recovery window of 12-24 months.
Passan does a great job of demystifying the medical and biomechanical aspects of what exactly happens within a pitcher's body and arm when they throw a pitch. And while he never uncovers a "magic bullet" of training or predictive diagnosis that could keep pitchers from blowing out their elbows, he follows up on some promising research developments into the problem, almost all of it being done outside of professional baseball itself. It's hard to believe in an era when the Cubs happily agree to pay 32-year-old Jon Lester $155 million over six years that they aren't trying harder to protect such an outsized investment, but the evidence is right there in Passan's fascinating book.
Show Less
Collections
Description
"Yahoo lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports -- the pitching arm -- and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors. Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers -- five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big league players vulnerable and the coming generation of baseball-playing children dreading the three scariest words in the sport: Tommy John surgery."--Provided by publisher.
Awards
CASEY Award (Finalist — 2016)
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best: Adults (Selection — 2016)
Language
Original language
English