I like Your comments on The Adventures of Long Tossing and your open minded attitude on the subject, Your recovery program was very successful for you and I personally, certainly would if necessary and knew about it contact you and get right on it, There has to be a starting point somewhere along the way so why not grab on to a very successful rehab. program such as yours and run with it? Through my personal experiences as a youngster prior to signing a professional contract, I played various positions and spent many hours, two practices and two games per. wk. plus good weather day's in between throwing from all positions on both sides of the field including pitching during those times I spent a considerable amount of time throwing from the outfield, which I consider extrme long toss which I also do not consider to be beneficial to pitching mechanics from a mound. I am "77" and can still throw decent batting practice to high school and college players here in my area, At "40" to "50 Ft. of course, I contribute this to all of the day to day throwing I could get in when possible along with playing basketball and other sports as a youngster.

My sentiments exactly on your "120 Ft." maximum throwing distance and your reasoning behind it, also I am a firm believer that practice sessions must correlate with game conditions and as I view over and over when observing various age groups and levels throughout youth, high school and college players is the fact that they spend entirely too much time on extreme long toss and other drills in substitution of constructive bull pen's and mound work. An acquaintance of mine pitched for Texas when Tom House was there, he told me that their pitchers came up with chronic sore arms caused by Tom's flat ground and other throwing teaching methods, I do not know about that, I do know that as he taught you pitching is a side ways forward linear movement to front foot touch down with the stride matching the body height and that, then "THE HIPS LEAD THE WAY," which is as you mentioned the hip to shoulder separation for the shoulders to finally rotate and follow suit while bringing the throwing arm into and through the throwing process, other wise known as the "3" pivots, #1.THE HIP PIVOT". #2. THE COLLAR PIVOT," #3. SHOULDER PIVOT," An important lesson from "TED WILLIAMS," "THE HIPS LEAD THE WAY." as you say working on and correcting the mechanics is first and foremost important. Sandy Koufax and Tim Lincecum, both of who I have beautiful front pitching movements views of and who so many narrow minded people who are afraid to get out of their comfort zone boxes would say these two guys are freaky contortionists are great examples of how these very important movements should be executed and how our potential pitchers and pitchers of today could improve their pitching tremendously. If it aint broke leave it alone is "BULL" "IS NEGATIVE," "IF IT IS NOT BROKE," "IMPROVE ON IT," "GET OUT OF THAT NEGATIVE COMFORT ZONE BOX AND GET TO YOUR POTENTIAL" virtually injury free.

I have a distinct different opinion than most people of which I feel is most important on the main cause for the enormous unnecessary numbers of chronic sore arms and surgery's acquired by those from the malor leagues on down into our youth players as young as 12 yrs. old, which is the total lack of "EXPERIENCED, KNOWLEDGEABLE AND COMPETENT "PITCHING " "TEACHERS" who have taken the time to learn and to become keen students of the individual and team skills of the game which in the process allows them to learn how to, in particular, "TEACH," a potential pitcher or so called experienced one how to properly use his/her whole body from the ground up in a side way's linear movement to front foot touch down with a stride length matching one's body height, then how to execute the " 3" necessary pivots, #"1. HIP PIVOT" Hips leading the way, "#2." COLLAR PIVOT" "#3" "SHOULDER PIVOT." so as to alleviate the enormous "TENSION, STRAIN and ABUSE created on the throwing arm, muscles and other body parts involved during the execution of throwing a baseball, If people could view the animated sight of the fore arm explosion upon the release of a fast ball and how the skin blows up like a balloon and appears as if the elbow and fore arm are coming loose their eyes would pop right out of their sockets, To me it is a very scary sight, and everyone talks about the curve ball being the culprit which certainly is when one reaches out front with fingers on the sides of the ball and jerks it off.

It is my opinion that the chronic sore arms and various unnecessary surgery's will continue to escalate until knowledgeable and competent pitching "TEACHERS" become more predominate within our sport within all levels and age groups combined with all of the other necessary practice procedures which enables self improvement to materialize.