Mike Burke
Cumberland Times-News
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Welcome back to the big leagues, D.C. In those 34 summers without Major League Baseball the only hometown feeling there was to experience was emptiness; the only hometown emotion, being on the outside looking in. Unless you wanted to drive 40 minutes up the parkway to watch the Orioles.
But in just the five seasons the game has returned to you, you have begun to feel the excitement of being at or near the top of the pack in signing and developing some of the best young talent in big-league baseball. The anticipation of what the future would bring bubbled over. And in pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg, to steal an old phrase first coined in D.C. by a paranoid, thumb-licking football coach, who made the district big league with his Redskins revival of 1971 (the same year Major League Baseball blew town for Arlington, Texas), the future is now.
Well, the future was now. With Friday’s news that Strasburg will have Tommy John surgery on his right elbow and will be out of action anywhere from 12 to 18 months, the future has gone back to being the future. And sure, with the likes of shortstop Ian Desmond, outfielder Roger Benardina, this year’s phenom Bryce Harper, catcher Wilson Ramos and second baseman Danny Espinosa waiting in the wings to join a still-young Ryan Zimmerman, the first and current face-of-the-franchise Brooks Robinson type player of the Nats, the future is so can’t-miss that Nationals fans have every reason to feel giddy.
But welcome back to the hangover of reality from having your own baseball team to emotionally invest into, D.C., for all giddy thoughts of any future begins with starting pitching, and in Strasburg the Nationals had one up on everybody in building a powerful young pitching staff for a baseball generation to come.
As Washington has proven twice before with the two baseball franchises it did not support, no baseball team will have the emotional hold, or pull the D.C. heartstrings the way the Redskins do. Yet with the news of Strasburg’s injury and impending surgery, folks in D.C. seemed to be walking around in the same kind of haze they do the Monday morning after a depressing Redskins loss to Dallas. And believe me, there is nothing more depressing than being in D.C. the morning after the Redskins have lost to Dallas.
So maybe there’s hope for baseball in D.C. after all. Maybe the fanbase has begun to develop feel and emotion for its big-league baseball team and will evolve into something other than the front-running big-event fanbase that it’s always been with every team other than the Redskins. If so, the D.C. fans have much to ponder during Strasburg’s rehab. Will he fall into the 90 percent of Tommy John surgery recipients who fully recover and sometimes even gain on their fastball? Or will he fall into the 10 percent that never touch a glimpse of the promise they once displayed?
Obviously, we won’t know until 2012. Nor will we ever know if this injury could have been prevented. It can certainly be surmised the Nationals’ handling of Strasburg had nothing to do with it as they coddled him as though he were their first born. As manager Jim Riggleman said, “I don’t know if we could have been any more conservative with him.”
Yet the innings and pitch limits that were used by the Nats and are used by too many others, brings to mind Leo Mazzone’s belief that the way to strengthen any muscle is to activate it, particulary a $15.1-million right arm.
"You make a living throwing a baseball so we encourage them to throw as often as possible," Mazzone has said more than once.
How many seasons did Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz and any other pitcher under Mazzone’s throwing program in Atlanta and Baltimore lose to arm surgery? Let Braves vice president Henry Aaron, a pretty fair hitter I recall, tell you in the foreword he wrote to Mazzone’s book, “Pitch Like a Pro: A Guide for Young Pitchers and Their Coaches Through High School.”
“A pitching arm is kind of like an automobile: it has to be prepared for the true test of its ability to perform under pressure,” Aaron writes. “You can’t drive a car around at 30 mph for six months and expect it to perform up to par when you take it out on the highway.”
Aaron said Mazzone’s pitching program is copied, because, “... unlike the rotations of other teams, the Braves’ pitchers have been able to pitch — with few exceptions — injury-free and at the peak level of performance. That remarkable run of success is a tribute to our throwing program.”
And, “Injury-free, first-rate performance is nothing new to Leo’s pitchers .... With the help of the throwing program and strong grounding in proper mechanics and instruction, our minor league pitchers had almost no arm injuries. This record of health and prosperity reflected the success of the throwing program.”
Why did Stephen Strasburg’s arm break down?
Better question: Why is Leo Mazzone making a living as a member of the media rather than as a big-league pitching coach?
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Write to him at mburke@times-news.com
