Read Online Curveball : The Year I Lost My Grip (9780545393119) by Jordan Sonnenblick - Free Book Online

pictures!”
    Mr. Marsh said, “I have an idea, but it’s gonna take a lot of extra work. I was thinking that maybe we could rearrange our class assignments so that you guys take the sports pictures. Does anybody here know anything about sports?”
    The only sophomore boy in the class, James, said, “Well, I shot a sports spread for the newspaper last spring, remember?”
    Danny leaned across his desk and stage-whispered, “Uh, Jimmy, I’m not sure chess really counts as a sport.”
    James turned and spat, “Oh, yeah, Mr. Big Shot Senior? And I suppose your status as cocaptain of the debate society makes you an expert on all things athletic?”
    A junior named San Lee, who usually leaned way back in a chair in the corner of the back row and rarely spoke, sat up and said, “Guys, shooting sports is really tricky. We need somebody with a lot of experience, or the whole sports section of the yearbook is going to look like it was shot with a little kid’s toy camera.”
    Angelika raised her hand. “Mr. Marsh, guess what? Pete and I are very experienced. I mean, at sports shooting …”
    And that’s how I became athletics coeditor of my high school yearbook.

I haven’t mentioned the worst thing about my arm situation yet, mostly because I hate thinking about it, and it’s way worse than just not being able to throw. It’s even worse than the scarring. The truth is, after my surgery, when all the splints, supports, and bandages came off, my left arm was super-weak, and the muscles were starting to get all shrunken and withered. I mean, I’m a sports guy. I’ve been working out every day of the week for years. Every time I’ve ever watched a ball game on TV, which was pretty much every night, I’ve done push-ups, sit-ups, and wrist curls on and off the whole time.
    It’s not like I was some huge hulk of muscle before my injury, but I was wiry. I was strong. So when the wrappings came off, and I saw how wimpy myforearm had become, I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. The doctors told me I’d be able to regain “much of the functionality” of the arm, which I’m sure they thought was very comforting. Then they sent me to physical therapy. All summer long, it was three afternoons a week. The first few weeks I wasn’t even supposed to move my own stupid arm. The therapists would twist it and turn it, or put it in machines that rotated and revolved while I bit my lip until it bled.
    I knew that stretching could hurt, but never like this. Just getting my arm extended until it was almost straight was like some horrible endurance event in the Cruelty Olympics. The hardest thing was that as soon as therapy was over for the day, the muscles would pull tight, and the arm would start to bend again.
    How bad was it? There were nights when I could barely sleep from the cramping. And plenty of other nights when I did sleep, but the pain found its way into my every dream. During the day, I wore nothing but long sleeves from July through October just sonobody would have to look at my wimpy little jacked-up limb. I never told anybody how bad it all was, physically or mentally. The physical therapist would make me fill out these pain self-evaluation forms and I’d just check off whatever column was closest to fine.
    There was no column for “epic arm fail” anyway.
    After the weeks of “passive mobility” exercises — in case that wasn’t too much of an oxymoron — the therapists made me start actually doing the stretching myself. Right around the time I became an official sports photographer, my arm was starting to feel a little looser. And then one day, when AJ had been bugging me again about getting back into pitching shape, I got home from school and the house was empty. So I went a little nuts.
    I took my pitchback net out of the shed, grabbed a bucket of baseballs from the garage, and set