Oh the spring! You can't love the spring without loving baseball at least not where I grew up in Maryland. Baseball was the Washington Senators and watching Frank Howard hit home runs. We piled in my Dad's Sunbeam Tiger and headed out to the game. There is nothing like the smell of peanuts, popcorn and looking out on to that neat and tidy field. The feel of that is in a league all its own.

As I was growing up my brother played baseball and my sister and I played slow pitch, modified and fast pitch softball from middle school, high school and I even played a year in college. I spent a great deal time on the pitchers mound perfecting my pitching skill and learning the strategy of the game. My father coached me from middle school through high school. It was sort of our thing, my dad and I. He loved the sport and he knew just how to get me to keep my head in the game. One time a young coach on the other team was heckling me at a high school game as I pitched. My Dad walked out to the pitchers mound and asked me if I wanted him to take care of that coach for me. I laughed and told him what he had told me a hundred times, "you don't need to say anything, you just go out and pitch your game and you let it speak for itself." He laughed and headed back to the bench and I remember my Dad saying that I struck out the majority of the players that day. The other coach never heckled me again.

When I went to college for physical therapy at Loma Linda University in California I had no idea that I would have the opportunity to take continuing education courses with Dr. Frank Jobe, who was the team physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers and who was famous for the "Tommy John" surgery. You see my Dad had told me all about the "Tommy John" surgery where the ulnar collateral ligament on the medial side of the elbow is reconstructed with a tendon from elsewhere in the body. The surgery is named after the first pitcher to ever have the surgery done by Dr. Jobe in 1974. Jobe had said it was a 1 in 100 chance for it to be successful and it was. Tommy John went on to pitch 164 more games and retired at age 46.

Since then the "Tommy John" surgery hit epidemic proportions. More and more pitchers are having the once-revolutionary surgery with such great success that now it appears to be merely commonplace. According to Dr. James Andrews, the orthopedic surgeon who is now the major league MD for elbow problems, stated that" It seems like every year I'm doing more and more, so from my standpoint it's and epidemic." In 2012 alone, 36 "Tommy John" surgeries were performed, up from the decade before where on the average there were below 20 a year. So far this spring there have already been 12 surgeries done on major league players. Andrews reported he has even had parents bring in healthy teenagers hoping the surgery will add velocity to their fastballs, when in reality it is the "strength gained through rehab that might contribute to the uptick in mph."

So enters the physical therapists and their role with baseball players and other sports alike. In order to play at your top physical condition you have to train for the biomechanics of your position on the field or the sport you love. The specialization that has occurred in sports has taken its toll on our athletes and yet to compete at such a high level it's almost impossible not to train year round. With training year round it will require you to have a physical therapist to assist you not only with injuries but also with a physical assessment of your biomechanics and then directing you in your training regime. Physical therapists know how to look at movement patterns, determine what muscles patterns are working and what ones are not and then develop a training program for it. Strength gained through rehab is an important part of the sport you play and will prevent you from injury. You may never throw at 95 mph like the pitchers of today, but you can excel and have fun doing it with the help of your physical therapist.

Sheree DiBiase, PT, and her staff can be reached at Lake City Physical Therapy in Coeur d'Alene at (208) 667-1988 and in the Spokane Valley at (509) 891-2623 for a thorough sports physical assessment.