I'm watching the reports on several major league baseball pitchers who are in treatment for neck and back disc herniations. What's the prognosis for these guys? The results of a recent study showed that major league baseball pitchers can recover from a neck or back disc herniation. It may take a while but they can even return-to-play after surgical treatment.How did they come to this conclusion? Public records were searched for information from 1984 to 2009. They found 40 major league baseball p...

I'm part of a group of guys who play baseball almost every weekend. I'm one of the pitchers and am interested in finding out what I can do during the off-season and pre-season to keep my pitching arm in shape. As you already know, a shoulder or elbow injury (the two most common types of injuries in overhead throwing) can put a pitcher out of the game. Sports orthopedic surgeons have investigated the effect of preseason shoulder strength on the risk of in-season throwing-related injuries.After lo...

My husband plays professional baseball. He had surgery last year on his shoulder and I'm worried that will always mean he might hurt it again. Can you tell me if this is true or not? There have been many studies done on shoulder and elbow injuries among overhead throwing athletes. Arm injuries are the most common in this group of players. We do know that pitchers often have one group of muscles that are weak compared to another. For example there may be an imbalance between the external rotator ...

I am a fairly new journalist now assigned to a small town newspaper sports column. My first assignment is to research shoulder dislocations in throwing athletes. Parents of our local little league players are worried about their kids ending up with one dislocation after another. I'm looking for some background information and maybe a new angle from what's already been reported. Can you help me out?

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a hotshot athlete. I always like to push the envelope to be faster and better than anyone else on the team. Right now, I'm out on rehab leave for elbow surgery. They had to redo my ulnar ligament. The therapist has given me a printout of what I can and can't do week-by-week for the next six months. I'm thinking I'd like to move that up as quickly as possible. What can I skip?

I pitch for my high school baseball team. This summer, I'd like to work on increasing my pitch speed. Are there some quick tips you can offer me? The accuracy and speed of the pitch depend on many, many actions such as the foot position and orientation (turned out/turned in), shoulder and pelvis rotation, knee extension, and trunk motion and position.All of these movements together form a concept of biomechanics referred to as kinematics. Baseball pitchers like you are very interested in the kin...

How do we get our 13-year-old son to stop pitching when he's tired? It's clear to us when he needs to take a rest, but he doesn't want to lose face or let his team down. It's a real dilemma. It's clear now to sports professionals that pitching every inning of every game is no longer a good idea. But that's how it was done in the early days of baseball and for many years after. Fatigue (no matter how strong the athlete is) can lead to injury. Researchers have studied this problem trying to determ...