By Matt Stout
Staff Writer

Illustrated here is a case of medial epicondylitis with pain and inflammation located within the ligaments and tendons of the inner elbow. Abnormal stress is placed on the ligaments joining the medial epicondyle of the humerus and the radius of the lower arm.

Jay Yennaco considers himself lucky.

A highly touted pitching prospect a decade ago, the Windham native and Pinkerton Academy grad was blessed with an arm capable of throwing a mid-90s fastball. Drafted 74th overall by the Boston Red Sox in the third round of the 1995 amateur entry draft, the now 30-year-old teaches what he’s learned as pitching coach for the Nashua Pride.

When Yennaco was a Little Leaguer in the late ‘80s, he trained under, among others, his older brother, Bruce, an experienced hurler who pitched through college.

At 12, Yennaco threw a fastball and changeup. No curveballs, sliders or breaking pitches – and, Yennaco said, that decision helped preserve his arm through high school and into the minor leagues, before overuse forced him to undergo Tommy John surgery in 2001.

Again, he says he’s lucky, mainly because he wasn’t forced to the operating room years earlier.

“When I had my surgery, I had it done by Dr. James Andrews, who’s arguably one of the best doctors in baseball,” Yennaco said. “And he’s telling me that now he’s seeing more 15-, 16-year-old kids (with arm problems) and he’s had to do Tommy John surgery on them more than ever before.”

The reason he’s had to involves the one thing Yennaco avoided until he was 14 – curveballs. They’re usually considered the next step in a young pitcher’s development and, if mastered, a key weapon against hitters.

Yet, for a 12-year-old pitcher’s arm, doctors, coaches and parents tend to agree, when coupled with overuse, a curveball can be poison.

Nonetheless, according to those involved with Little League from the local to the international level, curveballs are widely prevalent in youth baseball today.

The numbers aren’t definitive, nor are the variations of types of pitches, but the fact that they remain prompts the question, how early is too early to teach children to throw them?

For the most part, the answer is clear. Chris Downs, the spokesman for Little League Baseball, Inc., said the organization recommends to its 7,400 members that those under 14 years of age avoid throwing curveballs. Some area coaches put that cutoff age closer to 15 to 17 years old.

Regardless, when the world’s top 16 teams meet in Williamsport, Pa., every August, or two New Hampshire District One teams meet for a regular-season game in April, those involved say they’re seeing breaking balls wield their effects on hitters.

What they probably won’t see for years, however, is the toll the curveball takes on an 11- or 12-year-old pitcher’s throwing arm.

“In all the training that I’ve had, no one should be teaching a kid 15 or younger a curveball,” said Len Poole, president of the Suncook Little League. “You’ll see it all the time, especially just watching the tournaments on TV, a kid throwing 65 to 70 mph, and then they’re throwing curveballs and the ball is breaking five or six feet.

“And it’s amazing,” he added. “But in two years, that kid can’t throw anymore.”

Breaking down the options Jim Bail wants to make this clear. He’s against Little Leaguers throwing curveballs.

As a father of a 9-year-old pitcher, a former coach at Franklin Pierce College and a scout for the Atlanta Braves, Bail, also Windham Little League’s director of coaching development, has a rule: A pitcher’s arm needs hair under it long before it needs a curveball.

Still, it’s essentially not the curveballs that leave damaging effects. They’re just a manifestation of short-sightedness, Bail said. It’s the bad mechanics the breaking balls exacerbate that are the problem.

“There’s a school of thought,” Bail said, “that says if you have a kid that extends his arm – if he’s throwing a fastball with extension and releasing the ball where he should be – then it’s a very rare exception that he can throw a curveball because all he has to do really is cock his wrist and let the ball tumble out. But it’s dangerous ground.

“Basically, it ain’t the curveball,” he added. “It’s the bad mechanics that messes a kid’s arm up.”

Poole, also the Suncook majors all-star team coach, highlighted a similar point with the “step process” he takes in developing a pitcher. First, a player must learn an overhand fastball.

After that, it’s the overhand changeup. By the time he is 12, Poole may show him a circle-change-up.

“If they don’t have the overhand fastball,” Poole said, “there’s no sense in teaching a second pitch.”

It’s at that point where coaches tend to deviate. Though the big, sweeping curveball is generally maligned by area coaches, some opt for other pitches that most believe put less strain on a pitcher’s young arm.

A two-seam fastball, which provides some movement, is a common choice, as are a knuckle-curveball, cut-fastball or straight knuckleball, which all largely hinge on the grip of the ball rather than the torque of a pitcher’s arm. More debated pitches include the slider and even a slurve – which draws from both the slider and curve but relies more on grip and the placement in the hand for movement.

Then, there’s what Goffstown majors all-star team coach Steve Beal calls the “Little League curve.”

“You throw it more with a football grip where you come straight over the top,” Beal said, adding that a pitcher turns over neither his elbow or wrist. “It’s really letting the grip and the four seams do all the work for you, and if you throw it like you’re standing back in the pocket throwing a football, it’s gonna drop because of the way the ball is spinning.”

Despite the alternatives, though, curveballs are still being thrown, and not just at the World Series level.

“You’ve got parents who think, ‘Well, my kid is Pedro Martinez,’” said Yves Pariseau, the second-year President of the Auburn Little League. “You see kids looking at their coach and then looking at their parents, and their parents probably have their own signs or something. So there, they even bypass the coach.”

Though the situation isn’t always that extreme, some coaches said their control extends only as far as refusing to teach it and, in turn, discouraging it.

“I’m not the kids’ parents,” said Al McQuarrie, coach of the Salem American majors all-star team. “And sometimes kids just do stuff on their own.”

Others, like Scott Upham, coach of the Auburn majors all-star team, and Gary Clifford, coach of the Bow team, said they don’t teach the mechanics of a curveball, but they don’t tell their players they can’t throw it either. They also said few, if any, of their pitchers actually try it.

“And,” Clifford said, “I wouldn’t ask them to throw it – ever.”

Safety vs. competition Still, several people involved with their respective Little Leagues say there are overzealous coaches out there who put their players’ safety at risk.

These “nutballs,” as Windham Little League President Charles McMahon called them, are there to win, and are after any edge to do so. That often translates into curveballs.

“Everything you read and everyone you talk to will say, ‘Don’t throw curveballs before you’re mature,’” said Bail, the Braves scout. “Yet at the competitive level, you watch the Little League World Series and what are they doing? They’re throwing curveballs. It blows my mind.”

And many coaches believe that extra risk isn’t needed to win games. Brian Harrington, coach of the Bedford majors allstar team, emphasizes locating fastballs more than anything because “if you keep the ball low and away, even if the kid gets a hold of it, it’s going on the ground.”

“If you replay the Hawaii team that won (the Little League World Series) last year you’ll notice its top pitcher (Alaka`i Aglipay) did not throw any curveballs at all,” Harrington said. “I don’t think it gives a team any less or any more of an advantage than a team that has kids who can throw the ball hard and with control.”

“If the kid’s throwing a 65-mph fastball,” said Upham, “and you slow that up to 50 or 45, then it gets people swinging off their front foot. That’s more of a strikeout pitch than any huge curveball.”

In a December 2005 press release announcing the creation of a pitch-count pilot program to help cut down on arm injuries – an “experiment” nearly 500 leagues took part in – Stephen D. Keener, president and chief executive officer of Little League Baseball and Softball, said Little League International also “continues to explore other pitchingrelated issues, such as the use of breaking pitches.”

But without definitive medical evidence to support a ban on breaking balls, it remains “an issue we are looking at going forward,” Keener said in the press release. Seven months later, Downs, the organization’s spokesman, said “as far as regulating against it, we can’t do it.”

That leaves the decision to coaches, league presidents, parents and the players themselves in what has become the world’s largest youth sports program, one that has grown so much, it captures the attention of the nation – and ESPN cameras – for two weeks each August.

“The most aggressive level and the most competitive level in baseball is Little League,” Yennaco said. “That’s when the kids start to do things to get a little bit of an edge, but that’s not always the smartest thing to do.”