Win at all costs #thearm

That is a phrase you'll never hear me say when it comes to baseball and youth sports. While most people say that they agree with that, I don't think they understand what that means. I am very passionate and well read when it comes to arm care and development. In this entry I am going to share my personal views on travel baseball, pitching, and the overall state of the arm in baseball. Be fore-warned, this is going to be a long one.

I am currently 40 years old, and while that does not make me a young man it means that my youth was not ancient history. As I grow older I can't believe how much youth sports has changed since I was a kid. I never was a great athlete, but I loved to play every sport. I was a small kid that wasn't overly fast and not strong, yet that didn't stop me from enjoying any sport that the kids in the little town I grew up in were willing to play. In the fall I remember every school recess and evening being filled with soccer practice. On the weekends or after school there would always be a well organized game of 7 on 7 tackle football. When the weather got colder we would transition to basketball. If we weren't in a gym practicing basketball we could usually get a good group of guys together to play street hockey. When the weather warmed up you could guarantee there would be a baseball or whiffle ball game taking place somewhere in town.

It seems impossible looking back on it now, especially without cell phones, but with a few kids going on bikes in different directions and a make-shift phone tree, we could always somehow manage to get anywhere from 10-15 guys together every day to play some sort of sport. Our parents didn't care where we were going because they knew we'd all be together in some large public area playing a game of some sorts. It was just understood amongst us kids that there would be a standing game of whatever sport was in season each and every day. It was the worst when you couldn't play because your parents were taking you shopping or going on some sort of weekend trip. Yet, the games went on without you or whoever was missing. The next day or time you returned you would get caught up on all of the spectacular events that you missed.

Those days in the late 80's and early 90's were and still are the best days of my life. Summer was always better because we could play for longer, but there was literally some sort of sport being played every day. However, not once in my entire childhood did I hear one of my friends say that they couldn't play football or hockey in the winter because they had to go to a baseball workout. Nobody missed a summer neighborhood baseball game because of basketball practice. More importantly, in middle school we all played every sport we wanted because we didn't have to pick which sport we wanted to focus on. I think it is sad that in this current sports world we as parents have to make choices about our kids athletics based on what others are doing. We almost force them, and in some cases we do, to make a choice on which one sport they want to play and focus on when they get to middle school. Sure you can play other sports in high school, but if you're not a great athlete you better pick the one you want to focus on.

So how does all of this relate to youth baseball and winning at all costs? Not sure yet, but I promise I'm getting there.

Like I said, I was not a great athlete growing up, but one thing I could do on a baseball field was throw strikes. At a young age, that is like gold to a baseball coach or manager. Ever since I was 7 years old I can remember pitching. I honestly don't have a single childhood baseball memory that doesn't involve me pitching. I don't think they had pitching rules back when I was growing up, and I'm glad they didn't because that was my favorite position. All of my favorite players were pitchers. I wanted to be the next Dwight Gooden, before I knew about the drug use. In St. Louis the Mets were known as Pond Scum in the 80's, but that didn't stop me from getting a Gooden poster and a Mets hat. When I wasn't pitching in a game, I was at home throwing a ball of our retaining wall in our driveway. I would pick a brick and see how many times I could hit it. I would do this every day in the summer when I wasn't playing.

Like most people my age, organized baseball consisted of the local little league. There were no travel teams. The only tournaments that you played in were the postseason tournament for your league, and then any district tournaments that followed. As we got older we would occasionally take our little league team and go play in a local tournament after the season had ended, but that was it. The most games you would play in a typical little league season and the following tournaments would be 25-30 games.

Again, I don't know if there were pitching rules, but as I got older I remember pitching in every game. I hope that any of my Facebook friends that I played with that might be reading this can confirm or deny my fuzzy memory. Anyways, I can vividly remember the first time I ever saw a curveball. It was early in the season in 1988. I was facing a kid that I typically would crush, but suddenly he could make a ball drop. I wondered how he could do that. He quickly went from a kid I could rock to a kid I couldn't touch. As one of the best pitchers in our league, I wanted to be able to do that, but I didn't know how and I didn't know who to ask. Unfortunately for me, there was no YouTube in 1988. I was left to learn how to throw a curveball or slider the old fashioned way, trial and error.

All throughout the spring I would get in my driveway and practice my, what turned out to be a slider, against the retaining wall. I had no idea how to grip the ball, but I learned the more pressure I put on certain seems and the more I twisted my wrist the more I could make the ball cut. I now had a new weapon that I loved to play with whenever I could in games and my driveway. As fate would have it, that summer my little league team kept winning tournaments and kept advancing to the next level. I honestly don't know how big of a deal it really was, but we ended up winning the National Championship for our class and baseball organization. The coolest part for me was getting to do a little bit of traveling and playing teams from different states and areas. Again, I don't remember much, but I do remember being on the mound after every win, and most importantly I remember striking out the last kid with a little slide piece to win the "national championship."

What a great summer it was. I got to play baseball right up until school started. That was unheard of at that time. More importantly, that was the last summer that I remember pitching when my arm didn't hurt. The following year went much like the one before that in terms of pitching, but by the end of the year I remember starting to have some pain in my arm, but mainly my shoulder. Yet in those days, a sore arm meant take some Tylenol and "rest". I remember that my shoulder wasn't effecting my pitching as much as it was my hitting. I was dropping my back shoulder on my swing because I couldn't drive through the strikezone because of the pain. Eventually we lost the championship game in our district. I don't remember many games at all, but I remember pitching extremely well that day. However, I remember striking out 3 times, including the final at bat with runners on to end our season. I was devastated and embarrassed.

The following summer in 1990 would be the last year I would play organized baseball. I was 13 years old, and by the middle of that summer I couldn't throw without some sort of discomfort. Everything I threw would always tail to the right and nobody knew how to fix it. I honestly don't know if I had a noticeable change in velocity, but looking back now with some baseball knowledge my arm angle had probably changed drastically. I couldn't swing the bat like I used to, I couldn't throw the ball from short to first. I basically remember that last season playing a lot of outfield and struggling at the plate. My love for baseball was gone and my ability to do what I had loved was gone. When I was a freshman I thought that maybe my arm would feel better so I threw a few times in the cages during gym class with the baseball coach. It didn't take long for the pain to come back and the tingling down my arm to set in, and I remember telling him that I wasn't going to play. When he asked me if I wanted to play but not pitch I told him that I didn't see the point. My high school baseball career lasted all of 3 gym classes in the winter with the varsity coach.

Now I'm not writing this to bash my coaches or parents. Nobody did anything wrong, and in fact, I'm trying to be the kind of coach that I had in little league. He was a truly great man and coach. There just wasn't the knowledge about throwing and how to throw pitches the right way and when you should start throwing them. I honestly did most of the throwing by myself. if I wasn't throwing a ball off the retaining wall trying to be like Dwight Gooden, I was throwing the ball of the wall to field grounders like Ozzie Smith showed me how to do on Johnny Bench's Baseball Bunch. My arm was just being used to much and the wrong way because of my own lack of knowledge.

So am I saying that kids who play baseball should live in a plastic bubble? Absolutely not! However, after going through what I did I'd love to see some drastic changes in youth baseball. Now before I get into those changes, I will say that I think one of the best things that has happened in youth baseball are the winter workouts. While the hitting and fielding drills can become tedious, I strongly believe that the winter is essential for young pitchers to build up their arm strength. Muscles need to be used to avoid soreness and increase stamina. If you look at most pitching injuries they occur in spring training or early in the year when pitchers muscles aren't quite in game shape. Often times pitchers will injure their arm the first time they go all out in a throwing session or in their first real game action. Therefore, I think those winter months need to be used to build up pitch counts. Pitchers need to throw and rest, and then throw again like they would in a game situation. Pitchers need to ice their arms when they get a little tender or sore. Tenderness and soreness is normal.

Our society today has shifted completely from the way it was in the past. If somebody's arm gets sore people immediately panic and want to link things to overuse or throwing curveballs. I don't want to jump ahead because I want to discuss arm abuse later, but I firmly believe that a large number of sore arms are due to under-usage. I equate this to any sort of exercise. If you go out and run 3 miles once a week, you're going to be sore afterwards every time. Same thing if you lift or workout, you can't do things once a week and expect your muscles to build up endurance or strength. That is why major league pitchers only spend one day truly resting their arm between starts. Now in no way am I saying that young kids should take the same approach. However, some kids only throw during a game or at practice. If your kid only pitches once a week and has a sore arm, it is most likely because those muscles are not being used enough. The soreness is the same thing we would get if we would put ourselves through a rigorous workout once a week.

So let me back up a bit and relate this to travel baseball. I think that youth baseball organizations need to look at their pitching and innings limits in a completely different way. Knowing that most arm injuries happen early or late in a season, I'd like to see a couple changes made. I believe that no pitcher from 9-12u should be allowed to throw more than 3 innings or 60 pitches in their first tournament. No exceptions. If you run out of pitching, then you either forfeit or you rethink if you have enough pitching to play in these kinds of tournaments the rest of the year. I believe the following week the pitchers should be allowed to expand their pitch count by only 25 more pitches than they threw the previous week. After that, if things have been done right by the coaches and parents the player should be ready to pitch the remainder of the season without fear of injury. For 13-18 year old levels it should be 75 pitches or 5 innings, with the same step up the next tournament or game.

So some people might be reading this and thinking that under these rules there wouldn't be enough teams and pitchers for some of these travel tournaments, and that is exactly the point that I'm making. If you have gone through the travel baseball experience, you know that some teams have no business entering some of these tournaments. Other teams are good, but the same 3-4 kids are pitching every game. This is pitching abuse at it's finest. Most of these tournaments have guidelines and rules that coaches must follow, but almost every organization has rules that a joke. For example, an 11 year old kid in a number of tournaments gets 10 innings over 2 days. Could you imagine if a major league pitcher did that? Heck a large number of tournaments allow coaching to do whatever the feel in regards to pitching. Kids muscles have absolutely no chance to recover, and tendons that are still being developed are being strained and torn at such a young age. Again, muscles will recover with rest, tendons will not heal as quickly or ever if not treated quickly and properly.

What these rules promote are travel teams being put together that only have a couple of real pitchers. What ends up happening is the best pitcher on most teams will pitch 3 innings or so in a pool play game on Saturday, and then coming back to pitch as long as they can the next day. Again, if fully grown men aren't doing this, then why are developing kids and arms allowed and encouraged to do this? More importantly, why are the best arms being subjected to this. What I would like to see happen in youth travel baseball is that these organizations adopt pitching rules similar to Little League with mandated rest according to innings pitched and pitch counts. Now, I do think that Little League is not real baseball, but they do get it right in terms of the pitchers. What has happened in youth travel baseball is not so much who has the best team, but who has the two or three best pitchers that we can ride for a weekend.

Think I'm joking, let me give a couple of examples. I follow a number of 11u teams on GameChanger to see how they use their pitching. Recently one team had a kid throw 199 pitches over 3 games in a weekend. Another team had a pitcher start 3 games in 3 days. Another used a kid for 10 innings in back to back days and over 150 pitches. 2 of those teams took home championship trophies. Winning championships is not easy, so those teams should be commended, but who should we really congratulate? Should be congratulate the entire team or the kid who sacrificed their arm for the sake of their teammates and coaches? Should we congratulate the coach for successfully managing the kids' innings so they could throw their best pitcher in all the important games? Trust me, it's not easy to manage those innings. I know some parents think it's great that their kid is the best player on the team and the focal point. I also know that an 11 year old kid that loves to pitch and compete will never say no if a coach asks him if he wants to pitch. Trust me, I know from experience. How can coaches do this to kids? How can they not see the ball not coming out with the same zip? How do they not see the kid rubbing his arm or flexing his fingers to get the tingling to go away? How can they put a little plastic trophy over what is best for a kid? Something has to change and stop this from happening. If not, the game of baseball will only continue to get damaged goods when kids take the mound in high school and college.

So how can we make changes? Well, I think it's pretty simple, let's use common sense. How about all kids not in high school get 7 innings a tournament? Kids can still get overused to a degree within those rules, but allowing a kid to pitch a complete game is just fine. Once you've hit your 7 innings you're done. So what about teams that don't have enough pitching or pitchers? Well those teams shouldn't be there. If you do not have 7-8 kids who can pitch on your team you should not be playing travel ball. If you only have 3 "good" pitchers you should not be playing travel baseball. Why are the best arms getting abused? Is it so the coach can try to win a trophy while ruining a young kids baseball career.

There are a number of kids that you watch throw early in the year compared to late in the year and you can see that their arm is tired. It may not be hurt, but it is tired. Then tendons and the muscles are being overused. Muscles can recover and regenerate, tendons cannot. Coaches should have the ability to see this and the sense to stop it, but most do not. They simply ask the kid how their arm feels, and most competitive kids will say it feels fine. So yes, arms can get tired and sore at the end of a season, and a lot of times that is due to overuse.

So where does the curveball figure in to all of this? The curveball in youth baseball is as controversial as abortion or the president. Ask anybody and they have an opinion, and they usually feel their opinion is the right opinion. Let me share my opinion and where it comes from. First of all I have documented my own issues with being overused and throwing a slider that involved twisting my arm the wrong way. I have a partially torn rotator cuff that an orthopedic doctor recommended surgery on. I have received multiple cortisone shots in that shoulder so I could sleep comfortably or do things with my kids that were starting to hurt too much. Yet, none of that has anything to do with throwing a curveball.

It wasn't until later in life that I learned how to throw a curveball the right way, and I can say that my arm or shoulder has never once hurt when throwing one. So what? Why does my story or opinion matter? Well it doesn't. When it comes to arm care I'll refer to the person I consider the biggest expert on the topic, Dr. James Andrews. Anybody who follows baseball knows that name as the leading expert on Tommy John surgery and arm injuries. A few years back Dr. James Andrews and his research institute did a comprehensive study that showed that a curveball thrown properly puts no more stress on the arm or UCL than any other pitch. Still not good enough? Jeff Passan who is the lead baseball writer for Yahoo Sports did a comprehensive 3 year study on the arm and documented it all in a book called "The Arm." His conclusion was the same as Dr. Andrews. All research and studies show that what is causing arm injuries is overuse and the quest to add velocity. Now I'm not using this as an endorsement to throw 50% curveballs, but I'm using this as a guide to how I use my pitchers. Guys like Barry Zito, Bert Blyleven, and Adam Wainwright have some of the best curveballs in the history of the game, and a couple of things they have in common are that they began throwing curveballs around the age of 10 and never had any arm troubles until the end of their careers, so curveballs do not ruin arms, even at a young age.

I have a trophy that says "National Champions" on it. I'm now 40 years old and couldn't tell you much about it or how I got it. Quite honestly, it's not that important to me at all. The only reason I still have it is because I know I was a really important part of earning it. But in reality, it's just a stupid trophy that I'd guess everybody else on that team has thrown away a long time ago. Yet, a lot of those guys have memories of playing high school baseball that I don't. That is what drives my coaching today. I often wake up and my arm is tingling because of shoulder pain, and that's when I think of those young kids who love pitching. When I make a small movement and my shoulder pops and my kids ask what was that, I think of those young kids who love to pitch. When my wife is trying to be nice and massage my back and hits a certain spot that causes me to tense or shoot up, I think of those young kids who love pitching. In fact, the only reason I became a head coach was because my middle son had some pitching potential and I did not want him playing for anybody that would abuse his arm. I wanted him to have opportunities that I did not get.

While I hate losing more than anything, I have never asked any of my kids to go outside of any sort of comfort level in terms of throwing. But man can it be tempting. Baseball is the only team sport in which 1 kid can win a game for a team. Yet in 3 years of coaching youth baseball, I have never had a kid throw more than 100 pitches. In fact, I've only had kid throw over 90 one time. Those numbers will change as the kids get older and more mature. I have never had a kid throw on back to back days after throwing more than 50 pitches. I have never had a kid throw more than 70 pitches in the first tournament of the season. Only a handful of times have I asked a kid to pitch twice in one day, and usually it has been for an inning each time.

Am I perfect? Not even close. In fact, I don't think my best pitchers throw enough. I think my best pitchers get tired too early because they haven't thrown enough to build up the muscle stamina. Will my pitchers be injury free? Probably not. In Passan's book he basically concluded that at all levels across all parts of the world, predicting arm injuries is impossible. Some guys can pitch all the time with poor mechanics and never experience any pain, and some guys get appropriate rest with low pitch counts and good mechanics, yet their arm is always bothering them or breaking down. My oldest son when he was 12 years old experienced a season ending injury. He has always had really good mechanics and never thrown all that hard. In his second tournament of the year after pitching one inning he fractured a bone in his elbow because the ligament had not yet fully attached. Was it the coach's fault? Absolutely not. Was he throwing a curveball too soon? Nope. At that point he didn't even know how to throw a curveball. Did it scare me? You bet. I wondered if this would be something that would linger or limit his baseball career. To my relief and complete surprise, the following season he would lead his team in innings pitched, while now throwing a curveball and having his best offensive season ever.

So injuries can and do happen, even to coaches and kids who do things the right way. The only thing we really know about injuries is that we don't know when they're going to happen. However, watching youth travel baseball it is getting easier to predict who they might happen to. I love the game of baseball, but my favorite part is pitching. I love to think and watch great pitching. I marvel and kids who can throw with such velocity these days at a young age; yet, deep down I feel bad for them because I know at some point they will be abused. They will likely be told that they need to focus on baseball and play almost year round. Coaches will ride their prized arms to cheap plastic trophies as long as someone is willing to hand them out. Coaches will continue to enter their teams into tournaments and plan on pitching their best pitchers as much as they are allowed to. Some of those kids will go on to have fantastic high school careers, but it's those that do not that I feel sorry for. It's the kids that will have a closet full of trophies from when they were 10-12 years old and nothing later that I feel sorry for. It's the kids who are the same age as my oldest son that were very good pitchers when they were 9-11, but don't play the game or pitch anymore that I feel bad for. I remember those parents proudly talking about how their son threw over 90 innings as a 10 year old. I wonder how proud they are now.

I also hate the recent trend in baseball and pitching that it is all about velocity. I mean I get it, the harder you throw the more advantages you have. Kids who throw hard can get away with more mistakes. They don't necessarily have to learn how to pitch, they can just throw. A high school kid that throws 94 MPH is going to get more attention than the kid who throws 88 but commands 3 pitches. You can't teach velocity, but you can teach secondary pitches and command. Get behind in the count, it'a lot harder to hit the high velocity fastball compared to the average one. I am even guilty of going to the kids who throw harder versus other pitchers. Why? Well because most often they are most successful. In youth baseball, you have a much better chance of winning if you can prevent the other team from putting the ball in play. So if coaches are scouts are giving kids with the most velocity the most opportunity, why wouldn't kids want to learn how to throw harder? Again, this is where Dr. Andrew's and Passan both conclude that a major issue with the arm is that kids are learning how to throw harder at ages where they are more susceptible to injury. The arm is being pushed beyond it's limits, and coaches and scouts are the ones adding to the epidemic. We all love the power arms.

While I haven't done so yet, I am very tempted to get my kids involved in clinics and programs that will increase their velocity. Why? Well because I wanted them to have more opportunities with pitching down the road.

I know my views on the arm and how I think they are being abused are different than others. Some are even more conservative than me, but as a coach of youth baseball I can sleep easy knowing that have never had the win at all costs approach. While I often think about games that I could have prevented my team from losing by putting in a certain pitcher, I know that in a couple of years nobody will know or remember the number of wins versus losses. I wish that travel baseball would go away in many aspects, but that will never happen. I wish that tournaments would cap the amount of teams/games that they allow in an event, but that would mean making less money, but that won't happen either. I wish that teams that had the most pitching and used it the right way would win more tournaments because that's a true test of how good a team really is overall, but that would mean limiting the opportunities for the best kids to shine. I wish kids could play all sports and not have to worry about falling behind.

Oh well, until then I'll just keep writing down my thoughts and sharing them with anybody who will listen.