Much like having to rotate your tires on your car as regular maintenance, to ensure their ultimate longevity, what would you say is the most important thing you can do regarding your physical maintenance as an athlete, to put your self in a position to be productive and healthy over the coarse of a long career in baseball such as yours.
Jason D. - Maine

The best way to stay healthy and avoid injury is to know yourself and take care of yourself and listen to your body for warnings of wear and tear.

Back when I played, we didn’t see as many injuries as there are nowadays.  But back in the 1970’s and 80’s we didn’t have the same emphasis on weight and strength training that exists in Baseball today. My theory has been that players today don’t have baseball muscles; they have muscles that let them look good in a uniform.  The training that a lot of players endure is more for vanity rather than excelling at their sport.

The game of baseball is played with 38 oz bat (when I played it was, most are down to 34oz now) and the ball is 4-5 oz.  There is no need for a player to bench press 400 lbs in preparation for swinging a bat or throwing a baseball.  That type of intense strength training makes the players bodies too big and their muscles too tight as well as putting extra stress on joints, ligaments, and tendons.

If players are going to work out with weights, they need to have an element to their routine that will keep the muscles long.  Herschel Walker had ballet and now Manny Ramirez has yoga.  This all works to stretch out the muscles.  The players in Japan will stretch for an hour to an hour and a half.