The most valuable part of a professional baseball pitcher's body may be his arm, but on the pitcher's growth path, any risk of injury can destroy their evolving golden arm. Throwing too hard, throwing too many times, years of training, and throwing too many different breaking balls can all lead to injuries to elbow ligaments and shoulder tendons.
Now, one more item has been added to the list of potential risks: video games, one of young pitchers' off-the-field hobbies.
A new study of elite youth baseball players shows a significant correlation between elbow or shoulder pain and heavy video game play. This study was published in the September issue of the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery. The research subjects were 200 boys aged 9 to 12 who participated in a domestic baseball league in Japan in 2017.
Researchers from Japan's Tohoku University School of Medicine found that young players who played video games for three hours or more a day were less likely to experience elbow or shoulder pain in the year before the survey than those who played video games for less than one hour a day. 5.6 times the hour of small players.
Although the study was not limited to pitchers, the new findings are more relevant to pitchers because they are more likely to suffer elbow or shoulder injuries.
Orthopedic surgeon Bill Mallon, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery, which published the paper, said: "This shows that the link between (shoulder and elbow pain) and excessive video game playing is quite strong. We can't While there is a causal link between video games and shoulder and elbow pain, the researchers did consider other potential variables."
This was after taking into account other potential influencing factors such as age, position on the field, and daily training hours. The correlation is still quite significant. The study also examined how young players watched TV, and found that watching TV was not significantly related to shoulder and elbow pain. It should be noted that this study did not assess the nature and severity of shoulder and elbow pain.
Concerns about excessive exercise among elite-level youth pitchers focus primarily on the throwing motion. Research shows that from high school baseball teams to Major League Baseball, throwing-related injuries have been increasing in recent years, especially the incidence of ulnar collateral ligament tears in the shoulder has peaked. These injuries have prompted methods such as pitch counts to limit players' exercise.
But these young baseball phenoms are also kids. Many studies have shown that both the number of children playing video games and the time they spend playing them are increasing.
Ron Woolworth (Ron Wolforth) is the owner of a baseball training camp for elite baseball pitchers in north Houston. "I hear them talking about video games all the time," Woolworth said. "You walk down the hallway and you hear, 'I played Fortnite until two in the morning last night.' '" Fortnite is a multiplayer shooting online game that has become popular all over the world in the past two years.
It wasn't the pitchers' hands or fingers that Woolworth was worried about. What worries him is the body posture of these young players, who are always more bent when playing games than in other activities.
A few years ago, a major league trainer told Woolworth, "If you have a problem with your body posture, you're going to have elbow problems and shoulder problems." Woolworth was certainly there in his Training camps are seeing more and more postural issues.
"We're seeing more kids with heads and shoulders that are hunched forward than we were five or six years ago," he said.
The research mentioned above also has certain significance for Major League Baseball (MLB), because many MLB pitchers and players who play other positions are also avid fans of video games. Fortnite, in particular, has become popular in MLB team locker rooms. That's not surprising, baseball players have a lot of free time to kill, especially pitchers, who only start every five games.Given that baseball pitchers' arms are notoriously valuable, their obsession with video games also raises some concerns.
Boston Red Sox pitcher David Price, a veteran video game player, was scheduled to start in a May game against the New York Yankees because of a minor wrist injury. Tube Syndrome had to give up the game. Some believe it was Price's beloved game "Fortnite" that caused him to suffer the injury. This is the third year of Price's seven-year, $217 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. Under pressure, Price told reporters that he would no longer play games in the ballpark. But he said he doesn't blame his gaming hobby for his injuries.
"If gaming is really the root of the problem, it goes back to when I first got a PlayStation in 1997 when I was 12 years old. I've been playing games all my life," Price said.
Boston Red Sox pitcher David Price
However, in recent years, some MLB team management have opened their arms to video games. They regard games as a way to evaluate and improve the reaction ability of their team's hitters.
The Chicago Cubs and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays are two of the first teams in MLB to receive neuroscience training for their games. But the motor skills required for such games - such as pressing a button when a certain type of ball is thrown on the screen - are simpler than those of today's popular video games. Due to the lack of entertainment, players actually have little enthusiasm for this training game.
Regarding the neuroscience training game, Devil Rays outfielder Kevin Kiermaier had this to say in 2014: "Most of the time, players are like, every other day, 'Ugh, I'm Gotta do this thing again. '"
However, most of the time, video games are not annoying things. During last week's Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, players from the 16 participating teams lived in an apartment called International Grove. In addition to the swimming pool and cafeteria, the apartment also has a games room as a social space for the players.
This game room is equipped with table tennis tables and large game consoles, but because there is no Wi-Fi, most of the activities that the players come here to do together require their own mobile phone data. Outside of baseball, some of the best young players in the world are playing Fortnite.
Extended reading:
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Statement: This article was compiled by Lanxiong Sports from "Wall Street" The Wall Street Journal, originally written by Brian Costa.
