Overview

Yahoo's lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports--the pitching arm--and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors. Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers--five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game's lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big league players vulnerable and the coming generation of baseball-playing children dreading the three scariest words in the sport: Tommy John surgery. Jeff Passan traveled the world for three years to explore in-depth the past, present, and future of the arm, and how its evolution left baseball struggling to wrangle its Tommy John surgery epidemic. He examined what compelled the Chicago Cubs to spend $155 million on one arm. He snagged a rare interview with Sandy Koufax, whose career was cut short by injury at thirty, and visited Japan to understand how another baseball-mad country treats its prized arms. And he followed two major league pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey, throughout their returns from Tommy John surgery. He exposes how the baseball establishment long ignored the rise in arm injuries and reveals how misplaced incentives across the sport stifle potential changes. Injuries to the UCL start as early as Little League. Without a drastic cultural shift, baseball will continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to damaged pitchers, and another generation of children will suffer the same problems that vex current players. Informative and hard-hitting, The Arm is essential reading for everyone who loves the game, wants to keep their children healthy, or relishes a look into how a large, complex institution can fail so spectacularly.

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9781504696982

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Reviews

A stunning expose. -- Ken Burns, New York Times bestselling author A timely and comprehensive look at all aspects of a baseball problem that in recent years appears to approach a crisis. -- Bob Costas, sportscaster and New York Times bestselling author A must-read for any sports dad or anxious Mets fan. -- Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A) The best baseball book of the year...Passan spent several years in clubhouses and operating rooms to report The Arm...exceptionally well-written. -- Boston Globe One of the most important books on baseball of the decade...superbly researched and detailed. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Arm is the real deal-a book that's both readable as hell and that has something meaningful to say about the way the game works. -- BookPage Narrator Kevin Pierce captures the struggles and triumphs of players determined to return to their careers after suffering the ubiquitous injury and undergoing what has become a common medical procedure in the major leagues...Pierce's varying tones help listeners understand the historical, physiological, and athletic ramifications of the game-changing surgery-now called Tommy John surgery-that has saved countless careers. -- AudioFile

Narrator Kevin Pierce captures the struggles and triumphs of players determined to return to their careers after suffering the ubiquitous injury and undergoing what has become a common medical procedure in the major leagues...Pierce's varying tones help listeners understand the historical, physiological, and athletic ramifications of the game-changing surgery-now called Tommy John surgery-that has saved countless careers. -- AudioFile The Arm is the real deal-a book that's both readable as hell and that has something meaningful to say about the way the game works. -- BookPage One of the most important books on baseball of the decade...superbly researched and detailed. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) The best baseball book of the year...Passan spent several years in clubhouses and operating rooms to report The Arm...exceptionally well-written. -- Boston Globe A must-read for any sports dad or anxious Mets fan. -- Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A) A timely and comprehensive look at all aspects of a baseball problem that in recent years appears to approach a crisis. -- Bob Costas, sportscaster and New York Times bestselling author A stunning expose. -- Ken Burns, New York Times bestselling author

Author Information

Jeff Passan is a baseball columnist at Yahoo Sports, where he has worked for the past decade. He is the coauthor of the critically acclaimed Death to the BCS. He lives in Kansas with his wife and sons. Kevin Pierce comes to audiobooks from years of hosting public radio and TV programs. Now dubbed The Voice of the Apocalypse for prolific narration in postapocalyptic science fiction, he's also frequently heard narrating true crime stories. His much less gruesome real life centers on conversations with a Boston terrier named Max.

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