Each match is a huge effort from a physical point of view. You can only hit so many balls before your elbow or some part of your body is going to say, 'Hey, don't do that to me.'
A sore arm is like a headache or a toothache. It can make you feel bad, but if you just forget about it and do what you have to do, it will go away. If you really like to pitch and you want to pitch, that's what you'll do.
A pitcher's arm goes, and they're done.
For a lot of players, it's not that they don't want to play anymore or that they get tired of it or bored of it. It's that their bodies give out.
Exercise has its hazards. Runners are sidelined by shinsplints, freestylists by swimmer's ear, and who hasn't heard of tennis elbow? But the fitness buff of the '90s has a far greater worry. StairMaster Butt.
There's only one cure for what's wrong with all of us pitchers, and that's to take a year off. Then, after you've gone a year without throwing, quit altogether.
I will play until my knee, my ankle or my back say 'stop.'
Never in my heart did I want to quit, but I did, at the end of 2012, start to wonder when I was getting fractures from running hardly at all; I started thinking, 'Am I asking too much of my body? Is it not going to do this for me anymore?'
You do what I did to my body, for as long as I did, and it's bound to take its toll.
