Book Review: ‘The Arm’ Takes Aim At Elbow Injuries

The Arm

By Jeff Passan

HarperCollins Publishers, $26.99

The last time Jeff Passan took aim at one of sports’ hottest topics, college football blinked.

Jeff Passan’s first book—“Death to the BCS”—was a direct shot at a bowl system that left college football fans everywhere frustrated. Co-written with Dan Wetzel and Josh Peter, “Death to the BCS” exposed the many misconceptions, lies and excesses of the bowl system. “Death to the BCS” didn’t single-handedly lead to college football’s decision to begin a four-team playoff system, but it did help drive the conversation.

It’s unlikely that Passan’s second book, “The Arm,” will eliminate elbow injuries and Tommy John surgeries, but he brings the same passion and a very distinct viewpoint to baseball’s biggest current crisis.

Just 15 years ago, pitchers lived under the dual fears of shoulder and elbow injuries. Either was detrimental to a pitcher’s career, but the shoulder injury was seen as the greater evil. Since then, improved shoulder strengthening exercises have largely wiped shoulder problems from the list of baseball’s scourges.

But while shoulder muscles can be strengthened, there’s no exercise to strengthen elbow ligaments. Unfortunately the scars of elbow reconstructions are seen among pitchers in every big league dugout, and even more frightening, have become commonplace among teenagers.

Passan works diligently throughout “The Arm” to try to find out why. He rewinds back to Dr. Frank Jobe and Tommy John and the origin of the surgery to fix what had been unfixable. He talks to pitching coaches, pitching gurus and doctors to try to determine why elbow injuries are more and more prevalent and what can be done. He even travels to Japan to look at the nation’s struggles with pushing young pitchers too hard.

To give the book a narrative push, Passan also dives into the lives of Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey as the two pitchers work through the pain, monotony and doubts that come with the rehab that follows Tommy John surgery.

“Death to the BCS” has an easy solution–get rid of the BCS. Finding a solution to the peril of elbow injuries will be much more difficult. But Passan does what he can to point fingers (travel ball doesn’t come off too well), provide potential solutions and passionately state his case that baseball can do better. He even looks at innovative techniques that could dramatically cut the time to rehab elbow injuries.

Few baseball books are ambitious enough to try to examine a current topic from a significant variety of angles. Passan succeeds in tackling a massive subject and finding ways to educate in a book that’s readable for the casual fan but also detailed enough to prove a useful read for experts in the game.

Hopefully one day “The Arm” will seem as dated as “Death to the BCS” seems now. But for now it will rank as one of the most significant and best baseball books of the year.