The Shoulder Joint & Throwing Sports

As the Major League Baseball season comes to a close, we all know how important pitching is to the success of any of the teams vying for a playoff spot. Unfortunately, while important, pitchers are among the most commonly injured athletes in all of sports. The forces involved with throwing a baseball sixty feet, six inches, over 100 times in a night, using a variety of different grips on the baseball  can put an amazing stress on the joint.

The two most commonly injured regions of the body in pitchers are the elbow and shoulder. Elbow injuries are typically related to the primary ligament that connects the inner humerus (upper arm bone) to the ulna (inner forearm bone). This ligament is named the Ulnar Collateral Ligament and surgery for a tear or rupture of this ligament is commonly termed "Tommy John Surgery."

More concerning than elbow injuries are shoulder injuries, and that is due in part to the complexity of the joint. The shoulder can move in 3 planes of motion, unlike most joints in the body and offers a wide range-of-motion in each movement. The injury that is most concerning with regard to pitchers is typically an injury to the glenoid labrum, as shown above. The labrum is an extension of the long head of the biceps muscle and serves to deepen the relatively shallow glenoid cavity. Tears or injuries to the labrum often require intensive physical therapy and/or surgical intervention. Pitchers often return to pitching with diminished velocity and ability to execute breaking balls.