I'm Arguing With My Elbow... And Losing

Yikes. My right forearm near my elbow is throbbing. I've been icing most of the night, and I have two Aleve in me. I'll have to ice more in the morning. Only two more practices until Saturday, then I get a full day off.

This is occasionally a problem for me. As previously mentioned, my right (throwing) shoulder has been operated on once. For the orthopedic surgery geeks in the audience, I had an anterior capsular instability caused by putting too much stress on my capsule when throwing. For regular people, the front side of my shoulder was loose, so when I tried to throw, the head of my humerus would wiggle around enough for it to be blindingly painful. So the surgery I had took my loose capsule, folded it over on itself, and stitched it up, leaving it much tighter.

In a sense, the surgery worked, because I've never had instability problems in that shoulder again. However, I'm now four years post-surgery, and I'm still loosening my shoulder out to the range of motion that a baseball player is supposed to have. As a result of that tightness, when my shoulder gets tired, I put a lot of stress on my elbow when I throw because I'm compensating for the power that should be coming from my shoulder. When that happens, boom, the muscles around my elbow blow up.

We did outfield cutoffs today, which is where we are hit balls in the outfield and we throw them to bases. My first two throws were fine, and then it just tailed off from there. I let loose some balls that I'm not at all proud of, and when I was finished, my arm was hanging like a limp rag at my side. At least I hit the cutoffs. A weak throw on target is better than a strong throw that can't be caught. But a strong throw on target is much better. It was frustrating because I clearly had the weak arm in the outfield. This does not bode well for me. Although, I always knew I was going to have a weak arm relative to everyone else, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It remains the same: I'm going to run my way onto this team. I did make a sliding catch during outfield drills, and I got some compliments on my speed. That does bode well for me.

So that's why I'm sitting here icing. It didn't help that we did a bunch of push-ups again this morning, which helped put plenty of pressure on an already sore joint. But on the flip side, I did measure a 30.5" standing vertical leap. I disagree with the statement that white men can't jump.