Throwing Conventional Wisdom a Curve

None other than the "Paper of Record" had an article this weekend by Mark Hyman suggesting that the notion that little league pitchers should avoid throwing curveballs is bunk. Most of us who grew up in the 1970s and later have had it drummed into our heads that attempting to throw the deuce before age 14 would cause irreparable elbow damage, hairy palms and maybe even blindness, and should be avoided at all costs. Fathers who teach their sons the old Uncle Charlie are to be scorned and dismissed as men who would ruin their son's arms for a shot at vicarious youth sports glory. Well, what to make of all this?

First off, it appears that the notion that curves are bad came largely from anecdotal evidence and was never studies under controlled conditions. Instead, Hyman's article compares it to the Middle Ages belief that the world was flat, well, because someone said it was. In this case, Sandy Koufax's orthopedic surgeon may have been the first to curse the curveball, and was followed by others including the esteemed James Andrews who has performed over 100 Tommy John surgeries. The two independent studies undertaken to investigate the curveball's impact on young arms seem to conclude that not only are curves less stressful than fastballs, but nothing linked curves to elbow injuries!

The Alabama study can be found in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, and concludes that, "the curveball may not be more potentially harmful than the fastball for youth pitchers. This finding is consistent with recent epidemiologic research indicating that amount of pitching is a stronger risk factor than type of pitches thrown."

Andrews, for one, takes issue with the study precisely because of its controlled environment, and states that fatigue and game conditions need to be factored in before anyone takes the new information as carte blanche to get every kid over 6 raining down hammers on opposing hitters. I guess the lesson here needs to be a common sense one, in that we are really looking at overuse as the main culprit in destroying talented young arms. Maybe teaching a kid to throw a curveball as a second pitch isn't going to be the immediate death sentence to his arm that it was once thought to be. But, throwing 30+ curveballs in a row at age 12 (as Andrew's related had been the case with one of his recent surgical subjects) is certainly not going to be a positive contributor to a kid's baseball longevity.

I am in the northeast, where baseball begins in the early spring and ends in late fall. I know in some areas of the country, kinder weather can extend that season. But even for us, kids arms can take a ton of abuse in those 9+ months of the year. Maybe it's not the curve, but coaches and parents need to follow a common sense approach overall in order to keep young arms healthy. I know that in Little League, we monitor kids pitch counts and innings, but when we get into some of the travel seasons the monitoring is less stringent. Add to that the fact that some parents may have their kids playing in multiple leagues and you've got a recipe for trouble.