Throwing ( don't over do it !!! )

Well Teddy, you have a believer here!

I think people tend to poo poo a story like yours because they don't see it happen very often. The thing is, not every kid's arm will be hurt and that makes people believe, "It won't happen to me!" What people who advocate caution are really saying is, "The danger is there and it can happen to anyone!"

When I try to warn people that too much throwing, even just lobbing the ball back and forth can harm kids, I often get the same reaction BigWi gave to you. I'd guess he is basically correct in that you probably had something mechanically wrong that exacerbated your problem, but even if you didn't, chances are, you would have sooner or later hurt yourself by continued work.

I believe there is only so much stress any one arm can take. Lets assume we could put a point value on the total amount of stress an arm could take at 1,000,000 points. if you could put a point value on the stress of any one throw, with the max stress being a throw with max effort being 100 and a soft toss of only being 1, no matter what you do, sooner or later you get to 1,000,000!

What people don't realize is, depending on a variety of factors like physical maturity, strength, temperature, rest periods, and a variety of others, there is a multiplication factor for every throw. IOW, if a throw that would only be 10 points is made without proper stretching and warming up, it might end up being 25 points, or a max effort with poor mechanics might be 200 points.

The tricky part is, every player will use up points differently. No two players will burn out their arm on exactly the same number of throws even if they were exactly the same, and making that determination is one of the hardest things there is to do. That's why its not very brilliant to have every player do exactly the same things in working out or throwing in a game. The players are individuals.

While you injured your arm, another kid may have done exactly the same things you did and only made themselves better. The thing is, its silly to even take the chance with a kid! I keep saying that there is nothing in playing baseball but fun for anyone, until they get to where they can get something tangible for it like a scholarship or a contract, and people keep telling me I'm full of BS.

I may be wrong, but at least if I err, I'll err on the side of safety. There's plenty of time for a player to get the skills to be a major leaguer if they never played a game until they were 14! Of course there are some players who get to the majors when they're 19, but in general, they don't have the skills until they get to be in their mid 20's. That gives a player who didn't start playing until they were 14, 10 years!

Think about that for a second. Given an 8 YO and a 14 YO, which one will make better use of those 10 years of training and on which one will the stress of that training take a higher toll?

I guess I'll always be on the wrong side of this argument because as everyone knows, the only way players get to the ML is to be a stud player when you're 8-12. Yep! Every scout in the country is pouring over those LL stats and asking to see those trophies.