Really, I hate always coming off like an old-man on the porch shooing kids off the front yard, but it's hard for me to watch the Little League World Series with this issue as a major backdrop. And Erin Andrews sniffing an overly ripe parent in the right-field bleachers, while interesting, doesn't make for entertaining television.
It's the new Pitch Count Rule and it's effect on arm injuries juxtaposed with how the new rule effects the viewing product. Early returns are the effect is somewhat akin to peeing in your gas tank. Watching the aluminum bat swing mechanics (close to horrible) that produce 245 foot home runs just tosses me into a twisted rage. Anyway, here it goes.
FROM THE ST.PETE. TIMES: Little League pitchers: How young is too young?
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/01/Sports/Little_League_pitcher.shtml
Little League and the University of North Carolina are in the second year of a five-year study that examines the effect of breaking pitches. Eaton said developing ulnar collateral ligaments typically can withstand about 35 pounds of pressure and throwing a fastball "with a goodly amount of speed" exerts around 65 pounds of pressure. Eaton said twisting the elbow to throw a curveball weakens the muscles' stability that surround the UCL.
Little League recommends pitchers under the age of 14 not throw breaking balls, but that advice has fallen mostly on deaf ears. At the Section 7, 9-10 All-Star tournament last month, breaking balls weren't an uncommon sight.
"I watched a 9-year-old kid throw two curveballs for every five pitches," Southwest coach Ron Rhoads said. "Then I look in the dugout and see the (opposing) coach is calling them. Absolutely crazy."
This goes back to my rant about the answer rarely comes from the source of the problem. Rarely, if ever.
All of the following questions (derived just from watching a couple of un-watchable games) have the potential to pollute the numbers obtained from the "pitch-count during games only" survey. I wonder how each of these conditions are accounted for in the survey. In reality, most of them are beyond the control of the researchers.
Unless, you survey the parents/coaches and they are willing to verbally account for every pitch or throw their child/player makes in "chasing the dream", I'm not sure you have the proper environment to make reasonable conclusions regardless of what the data shows.
And not many parents/coaches are going to openly admit to the lengths they go to in order to get the perceived "exposure" their child/player needs to succeed. Most are borderline delusional or incompetent in these matters. Notice I'm not sure where you can separate the parents and coaches complicity, and in some cases, parent and coach are one and the same. Anyway, the answers would get massaged in order to avoid the perception that they are knowingly putting their child at additional risk of injury.
MY QUESTIONS:
SIDE GAMES OR THROWING:
1) The announcers talked about some of the side games between the teams in the tournament that were played in between the "regular" games where the pitches were being counted. Presumably there are pitches thrown during these games that don't count against the total. If coaches are involved, the top pitchers are likely throwing, hey you might face these teams down the road, you need to establish dominance and all.
PITCHING COACHES AND THROWING DURING TRAINING:
2) Players from one team mentioned how all the pitchers had "personal pitching coaches" who work on their mechanics. You have to throw to work on your mechanics and some of the tosses are under stress and duress levels comparable to games.
TRAVEL TEAMS/MULTIPLE TEAMS AND YEAR ROUND THROWING:
3) Much was made last year of one of the teams participation in travel baseball. The cameras actually showed the Mom of one of the prominent pitchers, in the stands, keeping score, and wearing the pullover of the TRAVEL TEAM. How are these pitches accounted for in the pitch count survey.
KIDS WHO PLAY MULTIPLE SPORTS:
4) This year, one the teams feature stories revolved around the fact that their football team was waiting for most of the members of the baseball teams season to conclude so they could get some of their players back on the field. I actually think this is a positive. But I wonder if the researchers are accounting for the multi-sport athlete vs. the specialist athlete. Are they parsing the data to account for these sub-groups? It would be interesting to see how the data fell among these two groups.
TV INFLUENCE ON THE RULE:
5) Gary Thorne was quick to bemoan the constant pitching changes extending the time of the games. The pitching changes are an unintended change to the game resulting from the rule. The other one is the prevalence of 10-run rule games resulting from the 7th or 8th pitcher on the roster pitching so coaches can navigate the #1 and# 2 pitchers through the constraints of the pitch count rules. How much of an influence will TV have on further changes to the rule, the result of the apparent changes
in the quality of the product as a made for TV event?
I hate to always sound like a skeptic, but until they can bring all these factors under the umbrella of the research, I'm not sure the results of the study will have much value in stemming the rising tide of arm injuries among youth baseball pitchers.
And I worry that the result will be unduly influenced by how the future product is received by Big Daddy Warbucks (ESPN) and his bag of corporate sponsors. Stay tuned.
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