Youth sports: do longer seasons increase risk of pitching injuries?
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Several years ago I coached a kid who was the best pitcher in our age 9-10 league. He had an older brother who was even better.
One day I asked the father how much he had them throwing each week. I was astounded at his reply. He essentially told me that he didn’t believe that a young kid could throw too much. He thought they should throw as much as possible. He believed kids’ arms were “elastic” as he put it.
These kids would pitch through the regular season, All-Stars, and then play on traveling teams well into the fall and early winter. Despite the inning regulations that most leagues have for pitchers, I am quite sure that these boys did as much competitive pitching in one year as most of us from earlier generations might have done in three or four.
I gave him an article from a sports medicine journal I had in my office, and suggested he back off a little. I really don’t think he paid much attention to me.
Not long after we moved from that town, I was told that the older kid was forced to quit in the middle of the season due to an elbow injury. I also heard a year or so later that the younger kid was having similar problems. I guess dad didn’t read the article.
When I was a kid in north Louisiana we played baseball from March to June, and a few of us might play in post season All-Star tournaments until the first of July. Then we hung up our gloves and did other things until the next spring.
Today, some kids may play in baseball tournaments well into the fall months. For some of these kids, particularly the pitchers, there are some real injury risks to prolonged seasons that have to be considered.
A child’s body is not the same as that of an adult — and by child, I mean any kid who has not completely gone through puberty and stopped growing. The bones have not completely ossified (turned into calcium), and the ligaments and tendons have not developed the strength they will need to handle the increased tensile forces generated by the larger muscles that develop after puberty.
The growth plate areas of the long bones (epiphyses) and the ligaments and tendons of the elbow joint are particularly susceptible to injury in kids, especially those who perform repetitive forceful motions, exactly like baseball pitching. There is no doubt in my mind that the extended seasons and tournament play we are seeing today place more kids at risk for elbow injuries than in the past-simply because of the dramatic increase in throwing that results.
It is not so much the fact that they are throwing more, it is that they are being subjected to the stress of competitive pitching over a longer time period each year. Competitive pitching is inherently more risky than just throwing the ball around in the yard because maximal effort is given on each pitch.
Since most youth leagues and tournaments place pitchers on limits of innings pitched and not a pitch count, the actual number of pitches that a young pitcher throws is subject to a lot of variability and depending upon how many batters they face, may be quite high.
In addition to concerns over extended seasons, I worry that sometimes adults get carried away with winning in tournaments, and as a result will push their more talented pitchers well beyond reasonable limits. The end result of this is ruined arms for a lot of talented kids.
There are several guidelines that can help prevent these sorts of injuries. First of all, pay attention to the number of pitches your child is throwing in competition, not the number of innings. There are guidelines for the number of pitches that are appropriate, but anything more than 80 pitches in a game is probably too much. If your kid throws more than 60 pitches in a game, he shouldn’t pitch again for at least four days.
Another suggestion — and this might be viewed as unreasonable by many who place a great deal of importance on the traveling team tournaments — is to simply not allow your kid to pitch in games past July if he has been pitching regularly since April. Let their arms rest through the winter.
Another important guideline is to listen to the child when they say they are hurting, whether you are his coach, parent or both. If the kid says his elbow or shoulder hurts, believe him. Whatever you do, don’t force him to keep pitching because you need one more inning or one more out to win a game. Don’t call him a sissy, don’t tell him he's gutless, don’t tell him that he is letting the team down.
You run the risk of ruining the kid’s arm for life.
Washam is a professor and chair of the Mississippi College department of Kinesiology.
