Yahoo! Sports Baseball Columnist Jeff Passan sheds considerable light on the trials and travails of pitchers—from little leagues to the major leagues—with the release of his new book “THE ARM: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports” (Harper, April 5, 2016), a critical look at a baseball epidemic.
One-quarter of major league pitchers today wear a scar along their elbows from Tommy John surgery, a procedure that replaces a ligament tearing at rates doctors believe epidemic. Even more alarming, more than half of Tommy John surgeries are being performed on teenagers victimized by overuse of underdeveloped arms. When commissioner Bud Selig at last admitted that this surge in injuries is of “grave concern” to the sport’s future, Yahoo! Sports baseball columnist Jeff Passan was more than two years into reporting his forthcoming book, “THE ARM: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports”, a searing look at a frightening future and how it might be remedied (Harper, on sale April 5th, 2016).
About the Author
Jeff Passan is the lead baseball columnist at Yahoo! Sports and co-author of Death to the BCS: The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series. He covered baseball for the Kansas City Star until 2006 and has a degree in journalism from Syracuse University. Passan has more than 140,000 twitter followers (@JeffPassan) and generates daily traffic through his column. He lives outside of Kansas City.
