(Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series that examines the expanding role Perfect Game is playing in promoting the game of baseball).
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Opening Day! Uppercase. Exclamation point. Two sometimes under-appreciated words. An annual date on the calendar many baseball aficionados in this country and beyond have long sought to have declared a holiday, one where schools and businesses are closed, ballparks and taverns throw their doors wide open, and young and old alike gather to watch a ballgame.
Major League Baseball is celebrating its official Opening Day Monday, although the Cardinals-Pirates, Blue Jays-Rays and Mets-Royals got a head start on everyone else by kicking off their regular seasons on Sunday. There was a time when the Cincinnati Reds, the oldest franchise in professional baseball history, received the honor of playing in the season’s first game, but no longer. That first Cincinnati Red Stockings team, by the way, finished its 1869 season with a 57-0 record, facing only teams of amateurs.
Sunday night’s matchup between the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals in Kansas City, Mo., should have revived some not-so-distant memories. The two starting pitchers, the Mets’ Matt Harvey and the Royals’ Edinson Volquez, started the first game of last year’s World Series at KC’s Kauffman Stadium, a game the Royals eventually won, 5-4, in 14 innings.
The last game of the 2015 season was played Nov. 1 at the Mets’ Citi Field, a 7-2, 12-inning Royals victory in Game 5 that gave Kansas City its first World Series Championship since 1985. The Royals, who advanced to the 2014 World Series but lost to the San Francisco Giants, are determined to return to the Series for a third straight year and become the first team to win back-to-back titles since the New York Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000.
“Everything has been really upbeat. There’s just this sense of confidence around here right now that is instilled in everyone,” Royals’ first baseman and 2007 PG All-American Eric Hosmer said during a spring training interview with PG late last month at KC’s camp in Surprise, Ariz. “We feel that we’re fortunate to have the same group back and have another crack at winning a World Championship. …
“There is history that can be made and this group knows that, and we want to be in the conversation of one of the better teams that ever played this game,” he said. “There’s a lot on the line for us this year and we’re ready to go.”
A tour of several Cactus League camps last month also made it clear there is a lot on the line on the north-side of Chicago this season, as well. Many Las Vegas odds-makers are proclaiming the Cubs the preseason favorites to win their first National League pennant since 1945 (ouch!) and their first World Series title since 1908 (double-ouch!), putting added pressure on the guys wearing Cubbie Blue.
It is a team that returns virtually everyone from a roster that won 97 games in 2015, including former PG All-Americans Kris Bryant, Addison Russell, Dexter Fowler and Javier Baez, and added former PG A-A Jason Heyward; PG National Showcase alumnus Anthony Rizzo also returns.
“Once you learn how to win a little bit and get in the playoffs and get some of that experience under your belt, it all definitely helps,” Bryant told PG from the Cubs’ spring camp in Mesa. “But it’s a new season and anything can happen, so we’ve just got to go out there with a new mindset and take what we learned last year and really apply it this year, and then see where we’re at by the end of the year.”
It is, indeed, a new MLB season, one that promises to be filled with heavy doses of drama and dream-making, heroes and heartbreaks, surprises and smack-downs. It is also promises to be a season of change and challenge inside the entire industry at every level of play, be it in the major leagues, at the collegiate or high school level, or during the Perfect Game summer and fall tournament seasons.
It seems every major sport enjoyed by Americans at both the professional and amateur levels are dealing with what are sometimes called – hysterically, perhaps – epidemics. In the contact sports like football, soccer and lacrosse, it is the very serious medical issue of concussions. In sports like basketball, tennis and track and field, it is, and always will be, knee and other leg injuries.
And in baseball, the issue of elbow injuries – particularly to young pitchers – that require the procedure that became known simply as Tommy John surgery has risen to the forefront. It’s Opening Day! There’s new grass on the field and plenty of new challenges ahead. And now it’s time to get to work.
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Opening Day! PG at forefront of arm care
Perfect Game is the world’s largest amateur baseball scouting, recruiting and event company, and with so many of its customers being young pitchers that are looking to advance their careers to the collegiate or professional level, it is an enterprise that has always put the issue of arm care at the top of its list of priorities. PG Founder and President Jerry Ford would have it no other way, and he’s justifiably proud of his company’s track record.
“I’m 69 years old and have been involved with baseball in many different ways for over 60 years,” Ford said. “Not once since becoming an adult have I ignored arm care. For many of those years I was a coach, including several years in college baseball. I’m proud to say that I’ve never had a pitcher that required surgery or had any serious injury. The only pitcher I worked with that had TJ surgery was my own son (Ben Ford), and that happened after (11 seasons, 415 games) of professional baseball. …
“Even in the Spring and Fall leagues that Perfect Game has run for nearly 20 years, there have been zero arm surgeries,” he said. “These things happen by being educated and careful.”
That is not to say more can’t be done, and PG is once again on the forefront of efforts to promote arm care and make sure the young pitchers – and position players, for that matter – enjoy long baseball careers beyond the one they enjoy in high school.
Within the last couple of years, Major League Baseball and USA Baseball formed an advisory committee consisting of physicians and athletic trainers and came up with the Pitch Smart initiative, a “comprehensive resource for safe pitching practices” in five age groups: 8-and-under; 9-12; 13-14; 15-18 and 19-22. Renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews, the founder of the American Sports Medicine Institute, and Dr. Gary Green, MLB Medical Director, are just two of 10 prominent members on the advisory committee.
“When MLB and USA Baseball approached us with an idea they had worked on, we were all ears,” Ford said. “While there can’t be a perfect system because each pitcher is an individual with different levels of endurance and fatigue points, the Pitch Smart initiative had guidelines that made more sense than many other rules in place. There was no doubt it would help eliminate most of the biggest arm abuse issues, so we jumped on board. We want to help educate parents and those in charge of young kids.”
PG’s Ford noted that at no time in the history of Perfect Game showcase events, including the heavily scouted National Showcase, had PG ignored the issue of arm safety – showcase rules were specifically designed to protect players from overuse and fatigue.
However, once PG started running its high-profile wood and metal bat tournaments where its officials no longer had control of the pitchers, a few instances of abuse began to pop up. Ford found these rare occurrences troubling enough that there was an occasion or two he took it upon himself to approach a young pitcher and tell him he was over-doing things. Perfect Game will insist coaches act in full compliance with the Pitch Smart guidelines at every one of its tournaments in 2016 and beyond.
Perfect Game Vice President of Tournaments Taylor McCollough noted that many of the Pitch Smart guidelines were first introduced at PG tournaments last summer, and he nor any other tournament official received any negative feedback whatsoever. He used that as positive reinforcement that the move to full compliance will be a seamless transition.
“What you’ll see is that pitchers will not be throwing as much in the event, although I’d say this has never been a problem for the majority of teams that attend our events,” McCollough said. “It will expose the teams that care more about winning than the future of pitchers. You’ll see this start to affect a team’s reputation and the recruiting pitches it makes to pitchers.”
McCollough acknowledges PG’s biggest obstacle will be tracking the data and communicating it with the teams. The primary tracking tool will be PG’s scoring application, which monitors pitch and inning counts for every game; that information, once compiled, will be posted online. When it is there for everyone to see, it is believed teams and parents will do more to police themselves. PG has not yet determined how offending teams and coaches will be penalized if such a need ever arises.
More information on the Pitch Smart initiative will be forthcoming from Perfect Game and USA Baseball as the PG tournament season hits full stride in late May.
The Fredericksburg, Va.-based EvoShield Canes organization, under the direction of Jeff Petty, won an unprecedented three straight PG WWBA World Championships in Jupiter, Fla., from 2013-15, usually on the strength of outstanding pitching (while remembering, of course, that a team also has to score runs to win ballgames and championships).
The Canes, one of the country’s most elite travel ball organizations, are in a unique situation in that they employ Jamie Evans as their full-time pitching coach during the summer and fall; he is also a pitching consultant to the Toronto Blue Jays. Evans oversees all of the Canes’ young pitchers but primarily works with the 16u group.
The first thing Petty and Evans do when they get a pitcher for the summer is check to see how many innings he just threw during his high school season. After that number is verified, the young pitcher will only be allowed to throw in the neighborhood of 100 innings combined from the spring through the fall. For players in the warm-weather states, that can be as long as an eight-month stretch.
“If I get a kid the first of June, when he comes to me I’ll ask him how many innings he threw in high school,” Petty said. “If he says to me, ’80,’ I’ll shut that kid down; he won’t pitch during the summer at all. We’ll give him an arm care program for the summer and then I’ll fire that kid back up in the fall and that’s when he’ll get the rest of his innings in.”
Petty does not live in a world of denial. He knows Tommy John surgeries are happening at every level of the game and they’re happening because of overuse. He points fingers at no one except the travel ball coaches who are negligent in doing their background work.
““In my personal opinion, if you (run) a travel ball organization and you’re handling high-level prospects and you run that kid out there … and you have no idea what that kid did in the spring, you are failing that kid,” he said.
Both Ford and Petty are quick to acknowledge a fact that is right out there for everyone with two eyes and a radar gun to see: kids are throwing harder these days. Ford recalled that 20 years ago when a high school player touched 90 mph on the gun, it was “rare and exciting.” Today, it takes the mid- to upper-90s to generate that same excitement.
“I think it is those young guys that have this ability to throw hard and their (parents and coaches) that need to be the most educated and aware of arm care,” Ford said. “The natural desire to compete and win can turn intelligent people into idiots. … Maybe this is where Pitch Smart ends up saving a lot of potential nightmares.”
(Wednesday: PG builds on the remarkable success and support of its alumni and uses new technologies and philanthropic commitments to help assure a healthy future for the game in the years ahead).