Yahoo’s lead football columnist provides an in-depth look at the most valuable item in sports-the pitching arm-and how it is vulnerability to injury is hurting players and the game, from Little League towards the majors.

Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers-five times more than the income of every NFL quarterback combined. Pitchers will be the game’s lifeblood. Their import can be exceeded just by their fragility. One small band of tissues in the elbow, the ulnar about The Arm: In the Billion-Dollar Secret of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports security ligament, is certainly snapping at unprecedented rates, leaving current big little league players vulnerable and the coming era of baseball-playing kids dreading the three scariest words in the sport: Tommy John medical procedures.

Jeff Passan traveled the world for three years to explore in-depth the past, present, and upcoming 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 invest $155 million on one arm. He snagged a uncommon interview with Sandy Koufax, whose career was cut brief by damage at thirty, and seen Japan to comprehend how another baseball-mad country treats its valued arms. And he adopted two major league pitchers, Daniel Hudson and Todd Coffey, throughout their profits from Tommy John surgery. He exposes how the baseball establishment long overlooked the rise in arm accidental injuries and reveals how misplaced bonuses over the sport stifle potential adjustments.

Injuries to the UCL begin as soon as Small League. Without a extreme cultural shift, football will continue steadily to lose hundreds of millions of dollars yearly to damaged pitchers, and another generation of children are affected the same problems that vex current players. Informative and hard-hitting, The Arm is essential reading for everyone who loves the overall game, wants to keep their children healthy, or relishes a look into how a huge, complex organization can fail therefore spectacularly.