Can your arms bend from throwing curveballs?

June 11, 2007 10:52 AM

Is it possible for an arm to become "badly bent" from throwing too many curveballs?

I've taken several great suggestions from this thread, most recently "You gotta have wa" by Robert Whiting (thanks ducksauce!). It's a fascinating book about Japanese baseball, and I love it - but there are many claims in the historical chapters that have me very skeptical. Among them is this passage, about an insane practice routine:

Ichiko’s pitchers each threw several hundred pitches a day in practice. Their pitching arms frequently became badly bent from throwing too many curveballs. To straighten them out, they would hang from the branches of the cherry trees that bordered the field. (p. 32)

Is there any (at all) validity to the claim that throwing huge amounts of curveballs can "bend" your arm? Some of these little tidbits are qualified with "they believed that" and things like that, but this one is presented as fact. I've thrown many a curveball in my life (though never several hundred per day) and have never had bending issues.

posted by ORthey to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (10 answers total)

My guess would be that their tendons had become tight due to over use...sort of like if you do too many curls and you have trouble straightening out your arm. Hanging from the tree is simply a stretch to loosen up the tendons/muscles of the foream/wrist which may cause the 'bending'. Just a guess though.
posted by spicynuts at 10:53 AM on June 11, 2007

Arms aren't made of carbon fiber, they have to be malleable to some extent, given enough time and pressure. If throwing a couple hundred curveballs per day is enough, perhaps.
posted by parallax7d at 11:30 AM on June 11, 2007

Over the course of a career maybe there could be a slight bend, but I really doubt it would be noticeable after a hard practice. It was more likely that they were just trying to stretch out their tendons.
posted by BobbyDigital at 12:09 PM on June 11, 2007

Haven't read the material mentioned, but is it related to the age of the players? Some coaches won't even teach a curveball to a kid until their bones are "fully developed" for fear of causing permanent damage...

(my arm stings at the very thought of throwing that many pitches EVERY DAY, however)
posted by Pufferish at 12:23 PM on June 11, 2007

Could it be a mistranslation of something like muscle cramps or soreness?
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2007

Response by poster: He doesn't really cite the source so it's hard to tell. I'm guessing it's either legend or distortion of truth (or different medical interpretations).
posted by ORthey at 1:23 PM on June 11, 2007

Carl Hubbell threw a screwball for so many years that his arm became permanently twisted. It's a more difficult pitch to throw than a curve ball, and I've never heard of it happening with a curve ball but it does seem to give the possibility.
posted by justgary at 1:47 PM on June 11, 2007

Little league and high school pitchers are usually limited to pitching only a certain number of innings per week in order to avoid damaging their elbows; I've never heard that it would actually BEND the arm.
posted by rcavett at 4:12 PM on June 11, 2007

Chances of a mistranslation are very low -- Robert Whiting knows his Japanese. Chances of original Japanese sources -- possibly coach himself! -- overdramatizing baseball are much higher. The tendon thing sounds like a plausible explanation of what was actually going on.
posted by No-sword at 4:12 PM on June 11, 2007

I don't think he means that the bone bent. Rather that the arm tightened with an odd elbow or shoulder angle, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. That's a great book, btw.
posted by YoungAmerican at 4:20 PM on June 11, 2007