A classic movie channel has been showing “The Music Man” lately, the story of a con man who tries to sell the small town of River City down the river.
\nA pitching guru came to La Jolla recently, promising the 20 young hurlers arrayed before him that he would increase the speed of their pitches by six miles an hour by the end of his instructional clinic.
\nWas he a flim-flam man in the mold of Harold Hill, peddling mere stories, or could he deliver on what he promised his youthful audience?
\nTom House, a former major league pitcher for nine years who has since made a decades-long career of coaching future Hall of Famers like Nolan Ryan, took his first subject at the afternoon clinic, Nick Hammel, a rising senior at La Jolla High.
\n“Shuffle, shuffle,” the 70-year-old instructed Hammel, as the 17-year-old went through his pitching motion, substituting a white handtowel for a baseball. House had him repeat the ersatz delivery twice, then led the young right-hander in stepping off how many feet his stride from the mound carried him.
\nA short while later, House, working with his third Viking varsity pitcher, turned to Gary Frank, head baseball coach at the high school: “A thousand repetitions in a month. They can get it.”
\nThe savant\u2019s mantra: Three miles per hour increase in pitch speed with improved mechanics, and three miles per hour in perceived additional speed with a longer stride \u2013 up to seven feet \u2013 from the rubber, for a total of six mph.
\nA release point closer to the plate as a result of the longer stride, the veteran pitching coach explained to his young charges, means the ball has to travel a shorter distance to hitters, who have less time to react.
\nHammel, La Jolla\u2019s number one this past spring until arm woes hit at midseason, Nick Ferenczy, and Dane Hansen, the three expected to be key members of the Vikings\u2019 pitching corps next spring, all seemed to be buying what House was selling.
\nHouse, a personal friend of Frank and his father, Howard Frank, who represented him legally his last year playing in the majors, holds a doctorate in sports psychology from USIU (now Alliant University) and throws out phrases rapid-fire like “GFF, Go Friggin\u2019 Fast” and “Keep your eyes level,” and talks of scapulars and “loose shoulders.”
\nIt\u2019s a dizzying array of data House has on pitchers \u2013 and quarterbacks, whom he also works with \u2013 and in his opening chat to the hurlers and their parents at his clinic, he said he wanted to focus on what would be useful in the limited time frame and minimize technical information that wouldn\u2019t be beneficial.
\nGary Frank got to serve as batboy for the Texas Rangers in games at Anaheim Stadium when House was their pitching coach in the 1980s. Both referred to the “hours and hours” of batting practice that House threw to Frank at LJHS\u2019s field at Muirlands Middle School. House\u2019s son played for La Jolla in the mid-90s.
\nHoward Frank shared the story with a reporter of House strategically staking out a place in the Atlanta Braves\u2019 bullpen, when he was still a player, during Hank Aaron\u2019s drive to break Babe Ruth\u2019s home run record. “He knew exactly where Aaron hit his homers,” said Frank, “and he caught his 715th home run on the fly. He ran to home plate and gave the ball to Aaron. Aaron always appreciated that Tom never tried to sell the ball to him or anything like that.”
\nHouse, in his opening talk in the dugout, made some pointed remarks that were aimed at the players\u2019 mental outlook as much as their pitching skills. “At this level,” he said, “you\u2019re a commodity. Do you know what \u2018commodity\u2019 means? You\u2019re a piece of meat, depending on how well you perform.”
\n“Which of your parents loves you more?” he asked. “Your mom. She\u2019ll feed you, no matter how you\u2019re doing in baseball. She cares for you as a person. When players win the Mercedes, they always give it to Mom, because of that. What does Dad do? When you\u2019re going bad, he gives you that (arms crossed). \u2018Hmm.\u2019”
\n“Focus on the process, and you\u2019ll never fear failure. How come there are so many players from the Dominican Republic in the major leagues? They have no fear of failure. They don\u2019t know what it is. They are so happy to get off the rock, to have three square meals a day, that they are grateful just to be here.”
\nHe often asked the young listeners to spit back what he just said. He checked a handful of players\u2019 triceps versus biceps size. “You can only accelerate what you can decelerate,” he repeated, explaining that the ideal for pitchers is equal size of both muscles, the biceps as the accelerator for arm speed, the triceps the decelerator.
\nHe backed his statements with statistics: “What is the most important part for a pitcher\u2019s arm? The shoulder. Eighty-seven percent come back after Tommy John surgery. Only 23 percent come back from shoulder injuries.”
\nCole Dimich, rising senior and quarterback on the Vikings\u2019 football team, as well as the baseball team\u2019s starting left fielder, came to the clinic and was told early on by House, “I\u2019ll work with you later.” House has been the personal throwing coach for current NFL stars Tom Brady and Drew Brees, names the young players maybe could relate to better than names from the past like Nolan Ryan.
\nOther Vikings going through House\u2019s exercises \u2013 which included carioca with arms raised the length of the field and back \u2013 included Garrett Brown, Frank\u2019s starting catcher last season, Blaise Gimber, a JV starting pitcher, and Carsten Fehlan, a rising sophomore and pitcher who is the projected JV starting quarterback next season, among others.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A classic movie channel has been showing “The Music Man” lately, the story of a con man who tries to sell the small town of River City down the river. A pitching guru came to La Jolla recently, promising the 20 young hurlers arrayed before him that he would increase the speed of their pitches […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":277404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"Pitching guru Tom House works with La Jolla players","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551,11553],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}