He Blinded Me With Science
Compare
If your body pH is alkaline, you can not get cancer. ... If itís acid, you can get cancer. In ourómy personal observations, every single person who has cancer has an acidic body, acid pH.with-Kevin Trudeau, from the infomercial designed to sell the book Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About
There was only one guy in the history of baseball who could pitch every day without discomfort, and that was me. People said I was a freak, but it was how I threw. Give me Kerry Wood and Mark Prior and, after I train them, they will be unhittable forever. Nobody will worry how many pitches they throw. ... [Larry Rothschild and Tom House]sure as heck don't know how to apply Newton's first, second and third laws to the pitching motion. They don't know Isaac Newton from the Fig Newton.The Daily Southtown's Paul Ladewski wrote a doe-eyed piece about Mike Marshall and his criticisms of Mark Prior's pitching mechanics. With all the hemming and hawing about Prior's health, it's irresponsible articles like this one where we need to keep our sense of perspective and skepticism. Read the article for yourself, but in case you choose not to, here's my synopsis:-Mike Marshall, Ph.D. (first quotation from 6/24/05 Tribune, second from article linked below)
1. Paul wants to trade Prior for Tejada. 2. Because Prior gets hurt and Tejada doesn't. 3. Mike Marshall knows how to correct Prior's mechanics so he doesn't get hurt. 4. The fact that Mike Marshall has virtually been blacklisted by major league organizations and that he knows Newton's Laws means he MUST be right!For all we know, Marshall might be right when he says there's a loop in Prior's motion. For all we know, Marshall might really have the secret to building every pitcher in his rubber-armed image, and there just isn't a single major league organization smart enough and bold enough to hire him and it's just a fluke that not one of his students has made it in the majors. But knowing Newton's laws of motion doesn't mean *#$% when it comes to building a better pitcher, and Marshall keeps pretending that it does in order to pass off his (currently) fringe, unaccepted theories as scientifically legitimate. Everyone, EVERYONE associated with the act of throwing a baseball understands that the trick is to apply the most force in the most efficient manner possible, and that a loss of efficiency requires the pitcher to exert more force in order to get the same effect, increasing the risk of injury. Whether or not Rothschild and House can name the three laws that first correctly described the relationship between force, mass and accelleration (in an idealized and pre-Einsteinian universe) is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether they can do more for Prior than Marshall could. And what about Marshall's claims that he could pitch every day, as demonstrated by his famous 1974 season, in which he appeared in 106 games and pitched 208 and 1/3 innings? The effects lingered, as he pitched in 57, 54 and 16 games the next three years. I'm sure Marshall's forgotten more about pitching mechanics and physiology than I will ever know. And I've been a bit unfair comparing him to Trudeau - the one mis-represents real science to sell his dubious theories, the other invents fake science to sell his patently absurd theories. But ultimately, we do not yet have one shred of evidence to suggest that Marshall's theories actually do build better pitchers. And in lieu of such evidence, an ignorant reporter with an ax to grind against Hendry, Baker and evidently Prior, lets Marshall spout off self-aggrandizing, scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo that does nothing to clear up the issues surrounding Prior, House, Rothschild, Baker, Hendry, or this insufferable trade talk.
Comments