It’s a goal of many ambitious little leaguers: to throw curve balls like Barry Zito of the Oakland Athletics.
But coaches in New Hampshire are concerned their players are too young to be throwing like the majors.
This season, some of them are taking a stand against the curve ball.
NHPR’s Kerry Grens has more.
This story was awarded the 2005 Best Sports Feature Award by the New Hampshire Associated Press Broadcasters Association.
[Ready? Let’s start! One…two…three…]
Players run laps and do stretches before a game in Concord.
The bleachers are mostly empty, it’s drizzling, and about 50 degrees.
But these kids don’t seem to notice, they’re just excited to play.
They’re between ten and twelve years old and they play on Concord’s American Little League.
This year the league is telling pitchers they can’t throw curve balls.
But just because they’re not allowed doesn’t mean they don’t know how.
Lucier: Curveball, you hold your fingers on the seams and then flick your wrist down…
Twelve year old Ethan Lucier pitches for the Swenson Granite team.
His older brothers taught him the curve ball.
He doesn’t throw them often—he knows he’s not supposed to.
But sometimes he can’t resist.
Levins: The curveballs are harder to hit. The kids want to do it because they want to strike kids out.
Tom Levins coaches Swenson Granite.
He says he’s told kids for years not to throw curve balls.
But they keep trying.
Levins: Kids watch it on sports center and the announcers are saying Wow! That was a great splitter or that was a great curveball so the kids see that and they want to do the same thing. But at the high school level their arms are wearing out I believe because they’ve thrown too much as little kids.
What he’s talking about is called little league elbow.
Surveys around the country show it’s becoming more and more common.
It’s the result of kids’ ambitions being stronger than their bones.
Each year Dr. Charlie Carr at Dartmouth Hitchcock treats players with little league elbow.
He says throwing a curve ball pulls on the area by the funny bone, where bones in the elbow are trying to fuse together.
Carr: The growth plate is a weak area until it fuses when we become an adult. And so by putting all the stress on the growth plate right there you can start to separate it. And as you start to separate it starts to create problems and pain.
The first sign of little league elbow is that it hurts to throw.
The pain then fades after a short rest.
Dr. Carr says most cases are not serious.
A few weeks of not throwing at all will work ninety nine percent of the time.
But in some situations, stress on the outside of the elbow can cause bone fragments to chip off, and those kids may need surgery.
Dr. Carr says one of the misconceptions about little leaguers elbow is that it’s just for pitchers.
One study showed that catchers actually had it more.
Carr: Part of it is catchers, you may only have one catcher on a team and he’s the guy catching for all those different pitchers. The other theory that this article gave is that catchers don’t even get up from their crouch position when they throw. That tends to create that real throwing from the arm rather than the body and so you’re putting a lot of stress on the elbow and shoulder.
[oooooohhhhh….give me a break…nanananana…give me a break…]
Many coaches are aware of the curve ball risk, and a few leagues in New Hampshire have banned the pitch.
Gary Ford is an umpire for Concord’s American League.
He says banning it is one thing, but enforcing that ban is another.
Ford: We can’t really control what they throw for pitches up there, but if we see that they’re doing it we can talk to the player and then also threaten to take them off the mound if they continue to do it.
Ford says that not all leagues are as strict.
He suspects that some coaches overlook curve balls, because it can give them an advantage in the play offs.
Coach Walt Faber says that winning a game at the risk of losing an elbow is foolish.
Faber pitched for the Detriot Tigers and the San Francisco Giants in the eighties.
He says that at this age, it’s more about learning the game and just getting the ball over the plate.
Faber: They’re not going to get to the big leagues from here. They got a long ways to go. They got to make it to high school, they got to keep their arm for high school. So that’s what they’ve got to look at, not here when they’re twelve years old. They got a ways to go yet.
And Coach Faber says they aren’t going to get there by losing their elbows in little league.
[hit and cheers]
SOQ
