The Arm: Contained in the Billion-Greenback Thriller of the Most Beneficial Commodity in Sports activities

Yahoo’s lead baseball columnist gives an in-depth have a look at probably the most priceless commodity in sports activities—the pitching arm—and the way its vulnerability to harm is hurting gamers and the sport, from Little League to the majors.

Yearly, Main League Baseball spends greater than $1.5 billion on pitchers—5 instances greater than the wage of each NFL quarterback mixed. Pitchers are the sport’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded solely by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue within the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented charges, leaving present large league gamers weak and the approaching era of baseball-playing youngsters dreading the three scariest phrases within the sport: Tommy John surgical procedure.

Jeff Passan traveled the world for 3 years to discover in-depth the previous, current, and way forward for the arm, and the way its evolution left baseball struggling to wrangle its Tommy John surgical procedure epidemic. He examined what compelled the Chicago Cubs to spend $155 million on one arm. He snagged a uncommon interview with Sandy Koufax, whose profession was reduce quick by harm at thirty, and visited Japan to grasp how one other baseball-mad nation treats its prized arms. And he adopted two main league pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey, all through their returns from Tommy John surgical procedure. He exposes how the baseball institution lengthy ignored the rise in arm accidents and divulges how misplaced incentives throughout the game stifle potential modifications.

Accidents to the UCL begin as early as Little League. With out a drastic cultural shift, baseball will proceed to lose lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} yearly to broken pitchers, and one other era of kids will undergo the identical issues that vex present gamers. Informative and hard-hitting, The Arm is important studying for everybody who loves the sport, desires to maintain their youngsters wholesome, or relishes a glance into how a big, complicated establishment can fail so spectacularly.