"There is no doubt that someone who tries to throw a curve or pitch at any early age before he's developed, before his hand is big enough to grip the ball correctly, will damage his arm"
About this Quote
Roberts isn’t waxing philosophical here; he’s drawing a hard boundary in a culture that romanticizes kids “playing up” and parents chasing scholarships like lottery tickets. The line lands because it refuses the comforting wiggle room of youth sports optimism. “There is no doubt” is a veteran’s impatience with a system that treats risk as ambition. He’s not warning about hypothetical harm; he’s calling out a predictable outcome.
The specificity does the work. He doesn’t blame “bad mechanics” in the abstract. He points to biology: a hand “big enough to grip the ball correctly.” That’s a quietly brutal indictment of adult expectations imposed on children’s bodies. If a kid physically can’t hold the ball the way the pitch demands, the arm becomes the compensator. The subtext is about leverage: the sport asks the smallest joints to pay for the big dreams.
Context matters because Roberts comes from an era when pitchers were supposed to be durable, when pain was often framed as toughness and workloads were heavy. That he’s stressing early-age damage reads like hard-earned clarity, not softness. It also anticipates today’s injury pipeline: travel ball, year-round showcases, radar-gun culture, and a pitch-design arms race that reaches down into Little League.
The intent is practical but the critique is cultural: we’ve normalized turning childhood into a preseason for professionalization, then acting surprised when the bill arrives in the elbow.
The specificity does the work. He doesn’t blame “bad mechanics” in the abstract. He points to biology: a hand “big enough to grip the ball correctly.” That’s a quietly brutal indictment of adult expectations imposed on children’s bodies. If a kid physically can’t hold the ball the way the pitch demands, the arm becomes the compensator. The subtext is about leverage: the sport asks the smallest joints to pay for the big dreams.
Context matters because Roberts comes from an era when pitchers were supposed to be durable, when pain was often framed as toughness and workloads were heavy. That he’s stressing early-age damage reads like hard-earned clarity, not softness. It also anticipates today’s injury pipeline: travel ball, year-round showcases, radar-gun culture, and a pitch-design arms race that reaches down into Little League.
The intent is practical but the critique is cultural: we’ve normalized turning childhood into a preseason for professionalization, then acting surprised when the bill arrives in the elbow.
Quote Details
| Topic | Training & Practice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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