READING TIME 9 MINUtES 51 SECONDSWHE N the umpires toss the 1939
baseball seasoninto the laps of the fans on April 18, let's all
hopethe fragile, panty-waist pitching stars of theNational and
American Leagues resolve not to be sissiesthis year!Fo r modern
pitchers a;re sissies!In common with a lot of other old-time
pitchers, I longhad a suspicion this was true. This suspicion was
confirmed by the impl.'essive hospital records established bythe
duly acknowledged kings of the mound during the1938 season-the Year
of the Great P ain. Sports writersgave more space to this pain and
that ache than to pitching performances, and star pitchers forgot
baseball andgossiped like fishwives about their ailments,
operations,and doctors! News from the 1939 training camps featured
the physical condition of 1938's invalids, and asthe new season is
about to get under way there's a question mark behind the name of
nearly every major-leaguepitching great!No t that we didn't have
sore arms in th e old d a y s ~ wedid. I had one for exactly twenty
yea1s! Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Big Ed WaJsh, Joe Wood,
and adozen other t opnotchers were chronic sufferers. But asore atm
in those days was a scandal and no pitcher wouldadmit having one.
We weren't crybabies or sissies, andbecause we weren't coddled by
owners, managers,trainers, and club physicians, we didn't actually
suffer.We just took our regular turn on the mound and workedout the
soreness by pitching. Our hearts and souls werein the game and we
would have suffered if a lame winghad kept us on the bench.But
times have changed. Consider the 1938 toll-andthe 1939 question
marks.Jerome He rman (Dizzy) Dean had a $185,000 pain.Doctors said
it was a subdeltoid bursitis. In all my yearsof pitching I never
heard of that ailment until Dizzybroke down with it. His brot he r
Paul (Daffy ) Dean andLynwood (Schoolboy) Ro\ve, great stars of the
1934World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit
Tigers, were shipped to the Texas League to fightout their sore
arms on a new front. King Car! Hubbellof the Giants was sent to
Memphis, Tennessee, for anarm operation , and Colonel William Terry
kissed his mealticket and the National League pennan t good-by at
thesame moment. Other casualties included Van LingleMungo, fireball
king of th e Brooklyn Dodgers; WayneLa Master of the Philadelphia
Nationals; Bob Feller and.fohnny Allen of the Cleveland Indians;
Robert Moses(Lefty) Grove and Johnny Marcum of the Boston RedSox;
Tommy Bridges of the Tigers; Bob Klinger of thePittsburgh Pirates;
Oral Hildebrand of the St. LouisBI'owns; Hal Schumacher of the
Giants; Claude Passeauof the Phils; Clint Brown of the White Sox;
and a floc!
8/2/2019 Pitchers Are Sissies
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arim
hissareg ,and;een!e
glad to arrive la te , dtess huniedly, and get away asqu ickly
as possible after th e game. Today the dressingrooms smell like a
French bagnio and look like clinics.They ar e equipped with all the
therapeutic lamps, ultrathis and infra-that, galvanic-cul'l'ent
machines, osteopathic and chi1:opractic bone-and-muscle-popping
tables,plain rubbing t ab les, and gadgets I can't eve n name.Th
ose dressing rooms and rubbing tables are the primereason for so
many so-called lame arms. Not long ago,wh ile visiting in one of
those dressing rooms, I saw atrainer doing acrobatics with a
starting pitchet. Thetrainer ha d the pi tcher by his heaving
flipper and waspulling the pitcher over his (the trainer's) sh
oulder, tostretch his pitching muscles. vVhat the t rainer
wasactually doing was stretch ing the capsule of the joint ofthe
pitcher 's good right arm! I' d have killed a guy whod id that to
me.Recently I exchanged confidences with a famous su rgeon who "
treats" many of the major leagues' sorearms. T he doctor said
continual stretching of musclesand incessant shoulder pulling by
the trainers is poisonto pitchers . T he docto r rela ted how the
sissy pitchersru..'1 to him with every little ache and pain ." If
the pitchers had to pay for diagnosis, hospit.aliza:or:. ,
treatment, ope ra tions , and all the other incidentalcosts, the re
wouldn't be a sore pitching arm in the majoreagues," he told me .As
I' ve wri tten , most of the burs iti s bites and othe1ailments are
imaginary. Imaginatjon, co upled with t emperament. Temper is a
better word.For example : An infielder makes an error, and
thepitcter's ar m begins to burt. A catcher follows this w itha
pa.3sed ball, or an outf.elder dr ops a fly, and, brother,llere's a
knot in that pitcher's arm as big as a football..3hr:c.!G, if the
gan:e was mectan!c.a[y periect there"'m:.!rir.'t be an>
baseball!n tl:e old days (f.\e or six years ago) all regula
rp:cchers di e : - ~ t d a y owners and managers reft.:se to
permit;,;c.
