Throwing it out – Are young baseball players hurting themselves by trying too hard?
This summer is coming to an end, and as thousands of young local ball players leave the field, having swung away and chased down flies and pitched their hearts out (and with fall ball right around the corner), more of these little warriors on the diamond are facing a new opponent: a malady called Little League elbow.
That might not be fair to Little League, but when you see an inflamed joint and the agony it can cause a young pitcher, the name becomes irrelevant, fast.
What does matter is that after all this time and all the education and warnings, young baseball pitchers are still throwing what many think are not only too many pitches, but too many breaking balls. And that can be devastating on young, still-developing bodies.
That’s where Erik Strahan comes in. A sports medicine specialist at Central Physical Therapy, where he’s in the midst of an area where as much youth baseball is played as anywhere in America, Strahan has his hands full.
On this spring afternoon, his patient is 12-year-old Rush Azlin, a right-handed seventh-grader at Central Private School, where he is a versatile member of the baseball team. He hurt his elbow a year ago, and he remembers it all too well.
“We were in a tournament in Thibodaux, and I was pitching, and I threw, and it started hurting,” Azlin recalls. Asked what he threw, he never hesitates: “A curve ball.”
Hearing the type of pitch makes Strahan wince.
“You shouldn’t throw a curve ball until you start shaving,” Strahan tells him.
Azlin is still a couple of years away from that milestone of young manhood.
He told his mother at the time that his elbow hurt, but like many parents would, she shrugged it off. Azlin pitched again a month later, and after two innings, he was in agony again.
This time his mom knew the pain was serious.
She got him to Central PT.
“He doesn’t complain anymore,” says Azlin’s mom, Haylie Dufour. “He was complaining every day—every time he moved his arm.”
“The main thing we worked on was mechanics,” Strahan says. In this case, Azlin was treated before there was a tear. He goes through a series of stretches and exercises when he goes to Central PT.
“He was torqueing his arm, bringing his elbow through, and that was causing those problems. It’s basically the same thing that happens with an adult pitcher who ends up with ‘Tommy John’ surgery [Editor’s note: ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction surgery, nicknamed for the former major league pitcher]. But in a young pitcher, the growth plates aren’t formed all the way … the ligament pulls on the growth plate.”
What’s interesting is that Strahan is busy with other young pitchers.
“You shouldn’t throw a curve ball until you get old enough to do it right,” Azlin says.
However, LSU’s director of athletic training, Jack Marucci—who is probably more known nationally for the line of bats in his name than for his work at LSU—thinks it all comes down to the strain of throwing too many pitches.
Marucci points out a stat that he heard this year: No pitcher from the Little League World Series has ever pitched in the major leagues.
“It’s not so much the breaking ball,” Marucci says. “If you throw the ball hard, you’re still loading the shoulder, and you’re loading the elbow. And with today’s travel ball? These kids are playing 40, 50, 60 games in the summer.”
Marucci knows firsthand, since his son Gino was an outfield star at U-High who is headed to play at the University of Houston next year.
In the meantime, Strahan has his hands full with sore elbows. As Azlin is leaving, another youngster comes in to Central PT, his elbow really swollen.
“We’re trying to get the message out,” Strahan says. “We’re trying to prevent overuse. These kids are throwing way too many pitches, and they’re throwing way too often. There are guidelines out there that are set so coaches don’t have to guess, because kids won’t tell you when their arm is tired.”
