If you want to know something badly enough you get involved in it. That is what the author did to study arm injuries and Tommy John surgery in the book “The Arm”.
He gets involved in the lives of Todd Coffey and Daniel Hudson as they prepare for the many things that go through their minds as they prepare for surgery. Passan was in the operating room when veteran reliever Todd Coffey went under the knife.
He was with Hudson and family as they examined all the aspects of surgery from failure to success and how they needed to fill the void in between. It was his second TJ surgery and there were new worries to the surgery.
Then he wonders how Major League baseball doesn’t protect the pitchers as he say there are six pitchers making over $30 million and more than $1.5 billion in pitchers salaries. Nearly 50% of them will end up on the disabled list and almost 25% will have to have surgery.
Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion annually on salaries for pitchers. That is five times more than the combined salaries of all the starting quarterbacks in the NFL. There are six pitchers who will be earning more than $30 million for one season’s worth of baseball in 2016.
This book, “The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports.” , shows real concern for the young kids that are out on the baseball field throwing pitch after pitch with very little care as to the number of pitches or the form they use.
Every year in America we find young pitchers that are phenoms with electric stuff getting forced out and into the operating table or out of baseball. Promising careers are being snuff out way too early in their careers. The problem is not going away and parents, coaches and officials need to wake up.
If you have a youngster that is a pitcher or aspires to pitch you may wish to read this excellent book. Then again, you may want to ignore the problem and just keep on putting your pitcher into harm’s way. Read this book to get a perspective on the pitching epidemic facing our kids.
