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Real Sports

I indians08100+ posts
Did anyone happen to catch the HBO Real Sports on pitching?

If not, they had a doctor on who has been doing tommy john sugeries to boys ages 11-13, enough to make someone sick.

He wants to start making coaches responsable and liable for such things.

I wanted to give my take on the subject and also get some of yours in return

I think its a joke some of the mentalities coaches have for young kids....11-13 year olds playing year round? Hello...most professional pitchers do not pick up a baseball from when the season ends until about december...how and why would anyone think a growing boy can maintain health during such a season. Another point of view this doctor had was these coaches are ruining these kids....for what? The coach may have a trophy on there mantle, meanwhile they hurt the future of a young kid. Example being Kerry Woods High school coach has a state ring, and he did so by throwing Wood a double header in one day over 100 pitches each game...Now was wood all for it, im sure, but its the coaches job to step in and say no....As that trophy hangs somewhere in Texas, Kerry Woods career has been filled with inconsistancy and injury and thats where most of it stems from.

I will use a friend of mines HS as another example...I believe over the last 9 years, 6-7 of the schools number ones have faced TJ surgery or arm problems out of hs...this is because a coach had the theory of "lets throw as many curveballs as possible" and constantly would have kids over the 100 pitch mark. I know some people have the attitude its not a coaches job to prepare kids for college, and that to me is very false.

Back to the show, it had the idea of outlawing curveballs until age 14-15 (a survery taken of MLB players stated that was the best age), if a kid were to throw a duece, he would be ejected...this doctor also wanted to mandate pitch limits as apposed to inning limits...which is a good point.

Will any of this ever happen? I hope so because it was sick to hear and to see what coaches do to kids, to see how desperate someone could be to win a pony league tournament and so on....Its time to stand up and make changes, there is no reason for an 11 year old boy to need MAJOR reconstructive survey

Now we all get caught in the heat of the momement, sure guys have throw on short rest and no rest at all in big situations....but at ages 11-13 I dont believe, in the big picture, there are big situations.

This is a very highly debated topic, and I personally have strong views on it because of the type of coaches I grew up with, ones that monitored pitches ata young age, encouraged and forced proper handling on off days and enough rest. I am not a win at any coact kind of guy, and maybe thats good, maybe thats bad....but would I do know is that I would never but a young childs health and risk to win a baseball game, because we all know that in the big picture, its not about wins and loses.

if you have any comments about my statements, please contact me at dwoinen@yahoo.com because I do not access this site very often

Looking forward to your comments
Bill Dwoinen Jr Assistant Coach Melrose Indians Baseball www.melroseindians.com
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S styles2310100+ posts
it is outrageous that kids 11-13 need tj surgery... being in high school and facing the pitching i must say kids dont throw good change ups if at all any. the better pitchers, and i did say pitchers not throwers use the change up effectively. im not exactly sure banning the curve ball is the right thing to do but its the sole responsiblilty of the coach to limit that. pitchers need to learn the curveball, but not at that young of an age. i would say learning a change up is just as effective as a curveball....... i know i put alot of short quick points in there but my main point is that kids at that age dont need to throw curveballs because a change up is just as good if not better
P pitchdoc24100+ posts
certainly a hot and ongoing topic. i agree with indians on this. the changeup is the best pitch in baseball, just ask greg maddux. best part is, it does not take a toll on the arm, yet it is effective in altering the hitter's timing. isn't that what it's all about? one thing that i do even with my varsity kids is tell them when they warm up/play catch, to use their changeup grip. this way, they are more comfortable with it. not many coaches call changeups during the course of a game, so kids are not comfortable when it is called, thus it's not too effective. might as well revert to the curveball! that's the mindset of a lot of coaches. if they are comfortable with it, thus can throw it for a strike, it is the most effective pitch in my opinion.

one example i want to share...i instructed in a camp last year at a local high school. i had the pitchers throwing in one session. this camp called for parents to be the catchers...and in this one case, the kid's dad was the catcher. i, as well as the other instructors, stressed "no curveballs". i am working with this kid in question and he is doing well, throwing fastballs (4 and 2 seem) and changeups. i walk away to help another kid, turnaround and his dad is telling him to throw dueces, kids starts changing his arm motion, etc. the kid sees me and starts throwing fastballs again...the dad just smirks. i'd like to know how this 12 years old kid is doing 5-6 years from now.

i'd also like to extend this a bit further and say that parent's should not be coaching kids in little league, but rather qualified coaches. now, i'm sure there are parents that are qualified, may have played some college ball or whatever, but most are not. most just want little johnny to get playing time, others want little johnny to make them millions. my guess is that these are the same coaches that start fights with the 14-16 year old kids that are umping these little league games.
FastballDadFastballDad1,000+ posts
Interesting thread. I think everyone is agreeable in that in any case where a kid of any age, particulary when they ar so young this kind of thing is a travesty. I really have my doubts as to how often this happens though. I coached kids of all ages for about 20 years and I never saw anything like that happen to a younger kid. Curveballs should be outlawed certainly at any age below 13, and like everyone said, promote the change-up and teaching to pitch. I hate to say it, but the competitive leagues and tournaments that most people here have been involved in as players or coaches will never make such a rule.

I think that most arm injuries are caused by overuse, throwing without warming up, leaving kids in when their mechanics are really bad and things along that order. My son played for a relatively strong and well-known Travel organization when he was 14, and the coach of that team set him back a year with the way they worked out, then threw on the side, in games all with disregard to arm health. He said "kids don't throw enough." Maybe so, but doing an hour of infield with hard and quick throwing and then being starting pitcher in a game and hour later wasn't a healthy thing for his arm. The fact that most teams at 13 and older play mostly tournaments is not good. We all know that during tourneys, most teams don't have the 4-5 starting pitchers you need in that format, so you have kids throwing more often in a 3-4 day stretch than they ought to.

Pitchdoc, in an ideal world, there wouldn't be any maniac parents coaching in youth baseball. The truth is that most parents may not be excellent coaches, but at least where I am they are harmless at worst for the most part. The other thing is that there are not enough qualified coaches that are not parents to do the job. Here in Barrington, we need coaches for about 90 teams, not counting softball. That's 2 coaches per team that are needed. As far as your comment about parents not having played college ball, that is overrated. I have met coaches who are terrific that never played college ball, and have met coaches that were dumb as a box of rocks, but coached and were deemed to be qualified just because they played college ball. Remember Bruce Weber didn't play basketball at UWM when he was a student.
I indians08100+ posts
Im glad to see that some people are on the same page

Doing the same camp this year pitcdoc refered to, we again stressed no curveballs, stressed 4 seam, 2 seam and changeup....if i had a dollar for every dirty look i got from parents when i said that kids shouldnt throw them till ages 14-16...id quit my job.

These kids would follow their parents instruction...walk in the gym and start firing away....instructors tried to control that but parents blew it off. To prove a point, we clicked on one kid....he threw about 80 pitches in an hour...and about 50 percent were dueces....11 years old.

I think there are enough educated people on the topic to make a change, and its starts with people like us...not every little league coach can be qualified....but they could be educated...it would be great if they had mandated classes and things like that
P pitchdoc24100+ posts
Fastball...I realize that in Barrington, or any other city, there may not be 180 ex-college players that are readily available to "volunteer" to be little league coaches. I would agree with Indians in that there should be mandatory classes that coaches have to pass, or at least take, etc. In fact, I know that another town, and I'm sure many others are doing this as well, require coaches to attend some sort of clinic. A couple years ago, I went out and talked to the Batavia youth baseball program about pitching for about 90 minutes. Was that enough to qualify the coaches? Probably not, but at least some guys may have picked up a few things that would help them. I believe they now make it mandadory for coaches to receive some kind of training. Of course, some will go through the motions and then revert back to the dueces, making sure their son plays every position on the field, etc.

Oh, and Go Illini!
FastballDadFastballDad1,000+ posts
Indians & Pitchdoc.....this is a very good topic, and anyone who argues against the sentiment is looking at a very small picture. Clinics (mandatory) and rules for coaches are the way to go. Nothing wrong with limits on innings or pitches, especially the younger the kids are. 3 innings or about 45-50 pitches is about right for kids up to 10 years old, 4 innings and about 60 pitches for kids up to 12, and for 13-14 there should probably be some kind of pitch limit. Leagues can also ban the curveball and slider and take it out of the coach's hands.
I indians08100+ posts
it takes a lot for me to get fired up

and seeing this show did it...it was just so sad to think that an 11 year old kid has to go threw that....why..because his coach wanted a trophy for his mantle

Some of the phrases used were great, just saying how in 5 years that coach will have his trophy, and the kids carrer may be over

Pitchdoc brought up a great point about clincs, and if one 90 minute talk could save 1 kids arm....its worth it because as well all know...tommy john isnt like an acl, if someone has it at age 19, it started with bad mechancis or overuse at age 12

I think that maybe people are starting to realize this and like i said, if it saves one kid, its worth talking
DE David EmerlingMember
Like many myths, the curveball is NOT the primary culprit to injured arms. Almost every responsible study ever done on youth league pitchers has revealed that the two PRIMARY factors contributing to arm injuries are 1) pitching too much or inadequate recovery time and 2) poor mechanics.

A pitcher with poor mechanics, throwing only fastballs, is more likely to suffer arm injury than a pitcher who is PROPERLY throwing a curveball.

The problem with the curveball is this - MOST PITCHERS DON'T THROW IT CORRECTLY!

The other problem is - THEY FALL IN LOVE WITH IT (because it works!) and their fastball suffers as a result.

Most coaches/parents don't know how to properly throw a curveball. Everybody knows it is a "spin pitch" so the pitcher is often encouraged to SPIN it out of his hand. This results in an unnecessary (and damaging) twist of the arm and wrist as the ball is being released. Sliders are thrown in this manner and SHOULD be avoided by youth athletes.

But the classic, overhand, 12-to-6, hammer-style, curveball can be achieved with just a karate chop and no twisting at all. Not stressful on the arm at all!

But how many kids do you know who have a straight-down-breaking curveball? Very few! What most people call "curves" are really SLIDERS ... a very damaging pitch to a young boy's arm. At best, they're throwing a "slurve", sort of a cross between a curve and a slider - still not desirable.

I have twin 14-yr-olds. I introduced the curveball to them when they were 12. They threw very few in games ... but we continued to emphasize the mechanics of the pitch in practice.

At 13-yrs-old, they started throwing it more often. Maybe 10-15 in an entire game. They have that nasty hammer that batters would chase in the dirt. Few batters have ever seen a curveball that does that. Mostly, they see slurves and sliders (and think those are curves).

Now they're 14-yrs-old and the curveball is a standard part of their pitching repertoire - along with the fastball and changeup.

No arm injuries ... no discomfort.

Their pitch counts are monitored - they get adequate recovery time between appearances - they warmup responsibly - and they have NEVER had any arm difficulties.

Kids have arm problems - sure. But I wouldn't be so quick to lay blame on the curveball. This is a different generation of children than some of us older farts.

When I was a kid, we played catch for FUN! When was the last time you saw two kids playing catch in their yard? They see it as a CHORE!

When I was a kid, we played outside from dawn to dusk. We threw EVERYTHING - rocks, pine cones, tennis balls, and, yes, BASEBALLS. We played pickup games in open fields even though we really didn't have enough players.

"If you hit it to right field - you're out!"

This generation? They play XBox and Playstation. They stay inside far too much. Their parents DRIVE them to where they need to go instead of getting on their bike and getting there themselves.

Believe me - the curveball is the LEAST of the culprits.

David Emerling
Memphis, TN
Last edited by David Emerling
DE David EmerlingMember
quote:
Originally posted by TRhit:
But they are part of the formula for arm injury !!!


ANYTHING done incorrectly is a good candidate as a "formula for arm injury." In that regard, true, the curveball is no different.

But then again, throwing a 5-oz object as hard as you can, over and over again, is not healthy for the arm, either.

Perhaps pitching, in general, is some kind of cruel form of athletic child abuse ... like javelin catching.

Saying "throwing curveballs is bad" rolls off the tongue so easily. But it's not a very educated view on the matter.

If a kid doesn't throw a curveball correctly -or- the kid has no access to anybody knowledgeable enough to teach him how to throw it correctly then, you're right - that kid has no business throwing a curveball - at ANY age!

But I would say the same thing about a fastball. I have seen kids with such atrocious mechanics it almost pains me to watch them.

If kids would simply play regular catch more regularly, they would have the arm strength to withstand all the maladies that befall today's modern youth ballplayer. They have no resilience.

Anybody over 40 will agree with me on this: When we were young - severe arm problems were actually quite rare. Not too many pitchers were heard saying, "Coach, my arm hurts today." We didn't maintain pitch counts and we didn't ice our arms. We all threw curveballs almost as soon as we could ... well before we should have, by today's standard. And yet, somehow, we all avoided the surgeon's scalpel.

And I'm not even saying that we all threw the curveball correctly, either. We simply had more resilient arms. And that resiliency was built up through repetition of throwing a baseball ... not by twitching our fingers across a Play Station controller for hours on end or by watching MTV.

Blaming curveballs is a far too simplistic approach to the problem.

David Emerling
Memphis, TN
Last edited by David Emerling
itsrosyitsrosy1,000+ posts
David, A very well thought out and accurate assesment, IMO. We live in a period where everyone is looking for one easy answer to their problems. Oh, it's the curveball, oh, it's the coach, oh, it's someone else's fault. I think you're correct in stating that first and foremost a young pitcher's mechanics are the single most important factor in developing and keeping a healthy arm. And your comments about what we used to do, back in the day, like playing from dawn to dusk, right field out, pitcher's hand out, etc made me think that no one seemed to ever have a sore arm. Time was spent outdoors, on the ballfield, throwing and hitting, hitting and throwing. No carpools, we had our bikes, no video games, we just played more ball.

Have a good Sunday down in Tennessee.
HSDadHSDad100+ posts
...And when it started to get too dark to play, we had a lighted parking lot we would switch to with a square painted on the wall of an adjacent building for a strike zone. That way we could extend our playing time to 10:00 PM. Though, sometimes we had to cut it short because of an inconsiderate slob actually working late and keeping his car in the lot where the pitchers mound was.

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