Hurt Arm

As the previous messages suggest No Game nor Tournament is important enough to risk injuring a 12 year old's arm permanently. Even, after being very careful with pitch counts and trying not to abuse my son's arm, he is missing Little league All-Stars plus the AABC Calif State championships this weeken due to a similar injury.

I do have one suggestion, and that is find a doctor who knows about sports injuries and perhaps get a second opinion. My family and our doctor believe's my son's injury originated last fall with a football injury. At the time, he was also playing fall baseball and we had our HMO primary doctor check him and he said it was just tendonitis (spelling?) Well, with rest and rehab work, my son was able to picht this spring until the end of May when his shoulder flared up again. We had been really careful. He was removed from the mound after approximately 50 pitches. We had used surgical tubing to stretch and strengthen the arm, and made sure he had the proper rest and throwing work between pitching assignments. Well, after two more weeks of rest with no improvement in the arm and playoffs looming we went back to our HMO doctor and had to demand x-rays. They showed a fracture in his shoulder.

We then took our son to the orthepedic surgeon who treats the San Diego Padres, and he told us that the injury did not look like an over-use injury but looked like an impact injury which caused a stress fracture which had been made worse by the strain of pitching. We thought back and pieced togehter the football injury, and the fact that our rehab work had strengthen the muscles enough that my son was able to pitch for over 3 months without pain but still inflamed the original stress fracture. Had we know of the stress fracture last fall my son could have rested it and treated it properly then and not now in the middle of All-Stars and State Playoffs. We are now treating it with the help of our doctor and hope for a great future in baseball.

But, the moral of this story is ... don't ignore injuries and an injury not treated correctly now, can haunt you in the future.

Good luck and have your son go and sit on the bench and cheer his team on. That is just as important as playing 1b.