Determination.

by Chad Bentz

I was just a young kid from Alaska that was born without a fully developed right hand.  What I later learned is that I couldn't of asked for anything more because that’s all I needed to start my long grueling road to the major leagues.

I started my sporting career as a hockey player and attempted to play baseball as well.  In a pitching machine league, the coach stuck me at pitcher and my teammates weren't the best when they would always tell me over and over that handicap kids couldn't play baseball.  After one baseball game I told my folks that I wasn't having any more fun and that I didn't want to play ball anymore and they had no problem with it.  All was well and good until we moved from Palmer, AK to Juneau, AK, which didn't have any hockey let alone an ice rink.  I was very disappointed to say the least, especially since I was the new kid in school with the screwed up hand.     

Elementary school was a rough time for me.  I had anyone and everyone judging and usually making fun of my hand, so I started putting my hand in my pocket until one day I was at our lake house in Michigan and saw a man pitching for the California Angels and he was switching his glove every time he threw and caught the ball.  My dad quickly informed me that this man pitching in the major leagues was missing his right hand.  I instantly felt an amazing feeling rush over my entire body making me feel something I don’t remember ever feeling before.  I didn't leave the TV and watched the entire outing.  That man’s name was Jim Abbott.  He changed my life in so many ways that this computer doesn't have enough memory to hold it all.  He gave me the confidence to try things and to try out for little league once again even though I had many reservations about it.  During my first season, I threw my first no-hitter, which I didn't even know what that was.  It was all done after that.

I spent my teen-age years in Michigan playing in a Connie Mack league.  I thought I was a pretty good pitcher when I was sixteen years old, until I pitched my first game in Michigan.  I got lit up pretty hard and didn't even last 2 innings.  I was extremely humbled and realized very quick that I had to start working if I wanted to get better quality hitters out.  When I went home I started hitting the weights and didn't look back.  I wanted to work and sweat more than the other guy out there who was trying to make the same goal I had.  I spent two more summers in Michigan and even had the chance to play in the Connie Mack World Series, which was a great experience.  

After my senior year of high school I was fortunate enough to get drafted by the New York Yankees in the 34th round.  I was beside myself being drafted by the yanks, but I knew it wasn't time for me to sign, so I decided to go to Long Beach State.  During that time I had to privilege to meet Jim Abbott face to face, which was a dream come true.  A lot of people have their favorite players, but Abbott is much more than that.  He gave me the courage to try and do things where as before I saw him pitch on TV, I would shy away from.  After two great seasons there I was drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 7th round and decided to start the hard road of professional baseball with the destination being the major leagues.  

My first spring training was exciting.  I remember seeing all the big league guys working out or practicing in the fields we couldn't go on, but just seeing them in real life was thrilling enough.  Then I met Tommy John and he introduced himself and was very kind and welcoming, asking me how I was doing and that he heard a lot of good things about me.  I just remembered thinking to myself, “this is the guy who’s saved thousands of careers because he had the courage to undergo a experimental surgery”.  I always felt comfortable around Tommy because he’s so easy going and he has even more stories and he tells them extremely well to that you can picture what he’s talking about in your mind as he’s telling the story.  Another reason is that he had so many different nicknames for me, with “Mercedes” being my favorite, since my last name is Bentz.  Unfortunately though Tommy was the Triple A pitching coach and I was in Short Season A.  

I pitched well my first year in pro ball as a starter.  I worked my tail off in the off-season.  I was in the gym religiously no less than five days a week.  I had another decent year and again worked and sweated my tail off in the off-season.  Finally, I had a break out season in Double A and earned a spot on the 40-man roster with Montreal.  I went to my first big camp not expecting to make the club by any means.  I just took the ball when they gave it to me and tried my best to get hitters out.  Each week passed by and I still was on the major league side of spring training until the last day of camp came and I was walking into the clubhouse after pitching to a minor league team and Frank Robinson, the Manager, told me “congratulations, you’re a big leaguer now”!  It was one of the best memories I have, along with seeing Abbott on TV for the first time, meeting Abbott face to face, my daughter being born, and I guess my wedding day!

My road to the big leagues probably isn't an everyday tail, but all is took was determination, perseverance, and sweat.  I am no physical specimen to say the very least, but I worked and got better.  Anyone can make it if they want to and if you give it everything you have, you’ll be able to lay down at night and sleep with ease, not wondering the “what ifs”.  Play until someone tells you that you cant anymore.  You have your whole life to work and only one shot of making it in whatever it is you want to do or be.  Believe in yourself and work hard and more times than not good things will come, whether it’s in your life dream or something else.

  

Pitcher's Running: Fact and Fiction

by Tommy John III

What I think I was blessed with was the ability to taste both sides of the experience. I played division I baseball as a 2nd baseman and pitched a little and then pitched professionally for 2 years. I also had the privilege of being able to train athletes/general public in regards to power improvement, velocity training, strength endurance and fat loss in a unique system of training that utilizes more of a Soviet approach to training.  The Soviet strength systems pride themselves of doing a great amount with very little leaving it up to the individual person, their central nervous systems, and their desired outcome for training to create the adaptations necessary to reach their goals. In these systems long, slow distance work is never utilized, especially not in preparing an athlete to become a very powerful machine able to throw 80-90mph fast balls 200 times over every start. 

The reason most coaches utilize distance running is to sharpen up the cardiovascular system so it can be more efficient in delivering nutrients to muscles needing to perform work...or improve conditioning. There is some benefit to running as it is work. But here's where it gets interesting. Long slow distance running raises levels of cortisol in the body which is the stress hormone. This hormone if elevated log enough can use muscle as a fuel source and fatigue your adrenals. No athlete ever wants muscle to be wasted. When you compare a marathon runner and a sprinter which body type looks more powerful? Yep, the sprinter. And pitching is power. It is an activity of short bursts of all out blinding effort lasting only fractions of a second with 20-40 seconds of recovery time between actions. So why would we want to train a power athlete like a distance runner? 

So here's my compromise: for athletes who just can't imagine a world where there would be a lack of running to prepare to violently throw a 5 oz object 60'6" 200 times a game, you can sprint. A nice conditioning day would be 10-12 40 yd sprints of all out effort w 30 sec or so rest in between. Stride lengths are wider, the lungs have to expand to force more oxygen in utilizing the primary breathing muscles...the abdominals, to perform this action, and the heart will get stronger along with increasing mitochondrial density improving energy output which goes along with certain strength training systems. 

Another alternative to running that would prepare a pitcher for his workload on game day would be plyometrics. For instance, perform 2 footed bounds 10 in a row with no pause then rest 45 sec and repeat 9-11 more times, remembering to use your arms to help propel you forward. Your legs will gain strength and power along with the erectors of your spine and muscles of the shoulder and arms as well. And...your heart will still get the workload it needs, even more so than with long slow distance running. 

I know it's a leap of faith. It was for me too. But I have not run in over 10 years, except when chased:) I am leaner and stronger now than when I was a professional athlete. Try it for 3 months or so, see how your body responds. I promise your results will speak for themselves as long as the effort is there. 

One more thing...when is it that you see pitchers get injured most not arm related? When they have to sprint off the mound to backup a bag or field a bunt. They pull up lame. I've seen it over and over when I played. And those guys getting injured were the guys who did most of the distance work. Their bodies just aren't prepared for the forces and speeds required to be a successful pitcher even after the ball is thrown. 

Amateur Baseball...STOP

by Tommy John 

I saw Mike Matheny's letter to the parents of the league where he and Kevin Seitzer were coaching.  It was the best I have seen.  How many times have we seen "over-zealous" parents ruin games or even a season?  It is a shame that these parents think they can make their little Johnny into the next Verlander.  They spend thousands of dollars on their sons in year round practice to be better.

I have always said that I am so happy I grew up when I did and where I did.  Growing up in Terre Haute was a Godsend!!!  Baseball was a sport between basketball seasons.  I played baseball from April to the end of August, then the ball and glove was put up to go practice basketball.  We didn't have time to get burned out nor hurt from overuse.   I feel that schools and school districts do a huge disservice to the athletes by making them ONE sport players.  Up until a few years ago, Alex Rodriguez was the top 5 players in baseball.  ARod was the QB on his football team, point guard on the basketball team and of course SS on the baseball team.  My point is this, playing 3 sports didn't hurt him in playing baseball.

I was a high school baseball coach in Ft Lauderdale from 1992-1994.  I coached a at private Christian school and had the same problems or more so than my contemporaries at the public schools.  "I donate huge sums of $$$$ to the baseball program so my son should get treated better!"  I love these parents because they are so easy to calm down.  My first year was fun.  We went to the State Championship and lost but we had a BLAST!!  At our little parents/athletes dinner I presented to each parent an evaluation of their child....in my eyes.  I also presented them with a printout of EVERY pitch their son threw in practice or the game and the % of balls to strikes.  I had the female managers keep a chart every time these players threw a pitch.  I didn't want a parent tell me that I hurt their son's arm.  But the best part was yet to come.

The next year and in 1994 we had a parent trying to worm his way into coaching or get his son's private pitching coach on my staff.  The reason was, "My coach played with the Yankees!"  My reply, "where?  When?"  Truth be known, he was in spring training with the Ft Lauderdale Yankees, in the Fla State League.  I had to put my brain into overdrive to come up with a "shoot down".  We had a parents meeting and I talked about the upcoming season and what was expected from their sons and from them.  In my smart-ass way to throttle this uprising,  I handed out my bubble gum card to every parent.  My comment was to turn the card over and look at the stats.  If anyone can come up with a card with better stats bring them forward and I'll step down. 

Two of my parents were pilots for trans Atlantic Airlines.  I told the group that when I get on a plane I look at the cockpit and say, "WOW.  I'm glad I'm not flying this sucker!  I have ZERO idea what to do."  Then I turn and go back to my seat.  Well, this is my cockpit and I know how to fly this thing.  Just turn to the right and go back to your seats, have a glass of wine and enjoy the ride.  It worked but it hacked off the man with the $$$$. 

My telling of this story is to say, enjoy your athlete being athletes and if they are good enough to play in college or beyond, turn right, go back to your seat and enjoy the ride.  Youth sports are to be fun and for the student-athlete.  Not for Mom or Dad to preen their feathers and make an ass out of themselves.  Have a glass of wine and enjoy the ride!!

-The Ol' Cowboy (Tommy John)

www.tommyjohn25.com
www.tommyjohnpitchingacademy.com

Mechanics

by: Garrett Berger

There is only two things you ever need to remember mechanically when you are pitching. Stay behind the ball and stay through the ball. There are a lot of coaches out there that over teach the position. Staying behind the ball allows your legs to get underneath you allowing you to obtain balance. Staying through the ball allows you to reach full extension, which maximizes your pitches chances for velocity and/or movement.

What bothers me the most is the concentration of velocity when it comes to pitching. A pitcher's job is get batters out. Plane and simple. A pitcher's job is not to throw the ball as hard as possible. Some pitcher's may have the ability to throw 95 mph but effectively throw strikes at 88-90. Whats wrong with that? The focus at a young age needs to change. Let's teach how we get batter's out and let's simplify the approach to maximize success.

So how do we achieve this? It's simple. Stop teaching velocity. We want all of our pitcher's to be able to maintain their velocity throughout the game without a major drop in velocity from start to finish. Pitching is a lot like driving a manual transmission car. We need to cruise in 3rd or 4th gear the entire game. When we want to pass someone we kick it up into gear, pass them, then get right back into 3rd or 4th. If we continually pitch in 5th or OD, whats going to happen? Transmission or engine problems are inevitable.

Conventional wisdom would think that we need to throw as hard as we can to get the batter out. However what conventional wisdom doesn't consider is the mental state of the pitcher. If I can throw comfortably in my "comfort zone" why would I consistently try to leave that area just to throw hard? We build confidence in a pitcher by pitching in our comfort zone and then you build velocity from there. There are a lot of instructors and dads that want their kids to throw hard right out of the shoot and what does that accomplish? Sore arms and bruised egos.



The teach we break down to is results. If I am pitching and I throw a strike, congratulations you just accomplished the first step in pitching. Obtaining the first pitch strike. The hardest thing for kids to do is repeat that same delivery and execute strike 2. Let's say that with the 0-1 count you miss your location and now its 1-1. What's your adjustment? Well most instructors would have the player programmed at this point to say well I missed my spot because of my front side or my posture or my head. WRONG. What you did wrong was you threw a ball. What's your adjustment? Throw a strike. What separates a good pitcher from a bad pitcher, is that a good pitcher only takes 1 pitch to make an adjustment. A bad pitcher takes 4 or 5.

You could have the best mechanics in the world but if you can't get a batter out then you can't pitch. Turn in your glove for a bat and hopefully you can swing it! Worked for Rick Ankiel. I'm sure at the amateur level there are much more. We have to teach ourselves to become our own coach. There are very few good pitching coaches out there. We know whats best for our body and it's time we start listening. If you are doing something and it doesn't feel right, do not be afraid to change it. Again it comes down to results. Would you rather conform and do things that don't feel comfortable or would you rather make the change and get more opportunities to pitch and play? Only one person can answer that. Getting batters out is the focus and always should be. Not mechanics. If your mechanics are bad the chances of you pitching long term are few and far between.

The best story TJ every told me was he was going to do an appearance at a baseball facility. They asked him to come in early because they had some fancy machine that had his delivery in it from old video footage. The guys were looking it over and said man TJ your mechanics were horrible how did you pitch for so long? He handed them their money and walked away.

This is where we are headed if we don't change our approach. How does a man that pitched for 26 years, won 288 games, have bad mechanics? Longevity is the key. Longevity in the game is what guys want. You can't pitch for 26 years and not be successful at what you do.

Let's change our approach. Now that I have talked just a little about mechanics or adjustments are simple. If you are ahead of your body and your arm is behind you, tell yourself to stay behind the ball. Again we only have 2 adjustments, stay behind the ball and stay through the ball. If we fly open, we need to tell ourselves to stay through it. Our mind listens to the last thing it hears. If we throw a bad pitch and tell ourselves, "man I just flew open," what's the last thing it hears? So what are you going to do again? Fly open. So we enforce the adjustment not the mistake.

Change our focus and ultimately we succeed. Change our approach and we stay injury free. If we pitch to pitch and not throw to see how hard it is, we will stay healthier longer. Save your bullets. You only get so many.



Happy Pitcher

Long Toss Programs

by:  Tommy John III

I don't think I will ever support a long toss approach.  I don't feel it has its place in a pitchers training and preparation unless he just "feels" like doing it, for reasons of feel not because someone told him it was good for him or he'd get stronger or he'd loosen up his muscles.  That entire article doesn't make any sense.  And what I love is all the research Tom House has done.  Honestly we can find research for anything, and prove anything through data because the truth is the reports will always find what they are setting out to prove and if they don't then they will tweak the controls until it does.  Medicine does it as well as the natural community. So research doesn't turn me on.  And when those guys say that as you expand out to 300 ft. you really increase internal rotation range and external range and stretch the muscles and open up the joint blah blah blah, what the hell do you think throwing it as hard as you can from a mound does?  

Its the effort they are trying to control for at 300 ft.  So control for it on a mound.  Then they say these guys become better athletes trying to make the adjustments necessary to hit a guy in the chest at 300 ft. What about hitting a dime at 60 off a mound at max effort? Pretty athletic.  I do agree 100% with the negative effect the confines of a system of reps and sets does to the human animal.  It keeps you within that range.  Throw til you feel you are done.  Listen to yourself. If your pre game is 100 pitches one day and 35 the next only because you felt ready then so be it.  And the only way to be able to do that is to throw.  

Now, what they never talk about is training. And what sucks is they all group training into one category but the things I've seen or done over the past 9 years you can't really say its training.  Because systems like this restore, regenerate, activate higher brain centers, raise the level of homeostasis, its meditative, spiritual, emotional and its all wrapped into one that if done right then the athlete can go do whatever they want however many times they want to do it.  

If we were outside moving and working with our hands and feet all day then yeah training would be a thing of the past.  But we aren't.  We are all taking advantage of the conveniences of today which is great but its killing us and our minds so we need to reverse that.  And Physical Therapy is out.  It is too comfortable, cookie cutter in that every rotator cuff is treated like they are the same, they rely on new technology which cuts out the integration from the brain to muscle at the deepest sense of it through movement on the Earth or against an object.  

Articles like this aggravate me although if you take everything they say about throwing 300ft and just switch in the word training you've got yourself something that even the best trainers worldwide would agree with.  But I will never say the best way to "train" a baseball player's body to absorb the forces he/she will encounter with their movements is to perform a baseball skill (throwing).  

Throwing is a skill and should be treated as such.  The mound is 60 ft away, that is how that skill should be crafted, polished, re-evaluated over and over, memorized, ingrained and dreamt about in a baseball player's mind.  If you are looking to open up the joint, increase the extension of certain muscles, or increase the amount of force that can be absorbed and created by said muscles then get that person to train emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, physiologically at maximum effort for every move.  Then he/she will be able to do their skill however many times they desire. 

A great follow up study:  Follow all those top draft picks who throw 300 ft. or all those guys that throw the heavy balls and don't let go or whoever they study, follow them and see how many need TJ surgery, or any other surgery and follow and see who's got crazy levels of degeneration in their joints.  Because truth be told if training is done right then the body isn't at the mercy of the sport regardless of the demand.  It is in constant regenerative mode.  And training properly can increase that whether they pitched 30 years, had an infection in their joint, or worked on a computer for a living.  Body will heal some scars over, it may take 60 years but it does it.  And throwing a ball 300 ft. just isn't what the body asked for to prepare it for the forces of life of a baseball player or anyone else.  

Here's my commercial:

Lebron shooting half court shots to improve jump shot

Tiger swinging like Happy Gilmore to improve his driving.

A PBA rolling an atlas stone to increase his performance, or bowling in the Salt Flats 800yds away at 10 pins.

Danika Patrick driving a monster truck or a fighter jet over 1500 miles away to improve.

Pro darts champion throwing at a dart board across a football field.

Why in baseball are we trying to rewrite the way to improve your skill?