And speaking of sophomore jinxes . . .
Something similar happened to Michael Jordan, though perspective is no replacement for a working right elbow. Jordan injured his foot in his second year and healed beyond hope and medical expectation, in spite of being limited by the Bulls just as the Cubs tried to do with Kerry Wood.
Lost to the Bears because of assorted injuries was their top draft pick and Heisman specimen, Rashaan Salaam, after a 1,000-yard rookie season. Salaam subsequently disappeared faster than his best time in the 40.
Optimists look at Wood and see Jordan; pessimists see Salaam. The glass is half full or the glass is broken into teeny, tiny shards.
Something popped in Wood’s elbow back, when? Last August? Not until Tuesday did anyone determine that it might cost him his career. Certainly it will cost him his second season. Wood might return whole and as good as new, or he may not. No prognosis nor diagnosis yet has been definitive enough to be trusted.
That’s the shame of this, that not caution nor concern nor discretion made any difference to where Wood is today. A young man with a dead arm. A year, two years, maybe, from pitching a baseball again.
Wood is like one of those teenage tennis burnouts. Instead of being the next Roger Clemens, he is the next Jennifer Capriati. How sad is that?
Somebody on the Cubs has to take the blame for this, of course, and I suppose Ed Lynch is the logical guy. He was a pitcher himself and Wood was his special prize. Maybe Lynch should have been aware sooner, or panicked faster.
But the Cubs are generally faultless, erring if anywhere on the side of prudence, wanting to ease Wood into a substantial fixture rather than exploiting him for the gate or for one of the Cubs’ rare pennant races.
The world and Wood himself would have had him back on the mound before the last playoff game last year. Lynch and manger Jim Riggleman resisted what circumstance and the fans would have insisted. Even so, hindsight will demand that Wood should have been left in the minors, to develop more slowly, under less pressure.
“Kerry’s arm,” Riggleman told me this spring, “doesn’t know if it is in Iowa or Wrigley Field.”
Ah, yes, but Wood knew. He knew where he was when he struck out 20. And he knew where he wanted to be in September. What kid wouldn’t want to pitch in a pennant race, not to let the side down, be out there in the big game? Has Wood been completely honest with the Cubs?
Maybe science knows too much these days, when not just the speed of a pitched ball is calculated instantaneously, but the torque on the elbow can be measured and gasped at. Put the thing on a computer simulation and you can almost see the force of the twist tearing the arm apart.
Anybody with a conscience and a good graphics program never would let another human being do that to himself on purpose.
Too much, too soon? I have been told it is not the curveball that ruins young arms. That’s because very few kids throw the thing anyhow. No baseball scout wants to see a nice breaking pitch. Velocity is the way to the major leagues. Everything else can be taught, even control.
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Most good pitchers in youth baseball throw hard. They do not need to throw the curve, never mind the changeup or the slider. If kids threw more slowly, changed speeds, concentrated on location, arms might last as long as they ever did. Kids today. They do not learn to pitch; they learn to overthrow.
It is an unnatural thing to be doing, but pitchers have been doing it for years. Satchel Paige was doing it in his 50s. Warren Spahn didn’t miss many days in a long career. And I’m guessing Nolan Ryan still can smoke the ball and get an AARP discount.
There have been hardball pitchers with arm problems and hardball pitchers without arm problems. But what seems to make the most sense is that a pitcher’s arm at 21 may be as strong as it ever gets.
I recall old seat-of-the-pants, science-be-damned Don Zimmer changing to three days between starts for young Greg Maddux. Wouldn’t such frequency ruin Maddux’s arm?
“He’s 23 years old,” Zimmer muttered. “He should be able to pitch every day.”
To get from where Wood was to where Wood is, doing nothing could have been better than all the scientific calculation and medical extrapolation applied to Wood. I’m guessing that old-fashioned voodoo or a good smelly poultice might have done as much good as anything.
What you have to wonder is if Wood had been allowed to use his arm fully, not just in installments, would the seriousness of the problem have become obvious sooner? Or would the arm have responded, as muscles will, and gotten stronger?
Not that it matters now.