{"product_id":"the-arm-inside-the-billion-dollar-mystery-of-the-most-valuable-commodity-in-sports-1","title":"The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports","description":"New York Times Bestseller\n“The best baseball book of the year.\" — Boston Globe\n\"Assiduously reported, viscerally rendered. . . . Passan follows his story from the field to the operating room, focusing on the Little League aces wrecking their arms. . . and the baseball executives trying to find a way out of the game's slow-moving crisis. For fans, it is a reminder of the fragility of the game we love; for every reader, the book makes clear all that baseball demands—flesh and blood, sutures and scalpels.\" —The Atlantic\nYahoo’s lead baseball columnist offers an in-depth look at the most valuable commodity in sports—the pitching arm—and how its vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League to the majors.\nEvery year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers—five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers are the game’s lifeblood. Their import is exceeded only by their fragility. One tiny band of tissue in the elbow, the ulnar collateral ligament, is snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big league players vulnerable and the coming generation of baseball-playing children dreading the three scariest words in the sport: Tommy John surgery.\nJeff Passan traveled the world for three years to explore in-depth the past, present, and future of the arm, and how its evolution left baseball struggling to wrangle its Tommy John surgery epidemic. He examined what compelled the Chicago Cubs to spend $155 million on one arm. He snagged a rare interview with Sandy Koufax, whose career was cut short by injury at thirty, and visited Japan to understand how another baseball-mad country treats its prized arms. And he followed two major league pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey, throughout their returns from Tommy John surgery. He exposes how the baseball establishment long ignored the rise in arm injuries and reveals how misplaced incentives across the sport stifle potential changes.\nInjuries to the UCL start as early as Little League. Without a drastic cultural shift, baseball will continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to damaged pitchers, and another generation of children will suffer the same problems that vex current players. Informative and hard-hitting, The Arm is essential reading for everyone who loves the game, wants to keep their children healthy, or relishes a look into how a large, complex institution can fail so spectacularly.\u003cbr\u003eASIN: 0062400371\u003cbr\u003eVSKU: BVV.0062400371.A\u003cbr\u003eCondition: Acceptable\u003cbr\u003eAuthor\/Artist:Passan, Jeff\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eNote:\u003c\/b\u003e Any images shown are stock photographs and product may differ from what is shown.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition Notes\u003c\/b\u003e: The item is very worn but is perfectly usable. Signs of wear can include aesthetic issues such as scratches, dents, worn and creased covers, folded page corners and minor liquid stains. All pages and the cover are intact, but the dust cover may be missing. Pages may include moderate to heavy amount of notes and highlighting, but the text is not obscured or unreadable. Page edges may have foxing  age related spots and browning . May NOT include discs, access code or other supplemental materials.  \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Blue Vase Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43331195502653,"sku":"BVV.0062400371.A","price":7.37,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0589\/4225\/9261\/files\/0062400371-0_101f90d7-d37c-4bd7-a298-4aa957e469dc.jpg?v=1783540783","url":"https:\/\/www.bluevasebooks.com\/products\/the-arm-inside-the-billion-dollar-mystery-of-the-most-valuable-commodity-in-sports-1","provider":"Blue Vase Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}