← The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
PTFO - House Call: Why the World's Best Pitchers and Quarterbacks Seek This Man's Advice
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- [00:00]
Pablo Torre
Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings. The Crown is yours. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
- [00:12]
Tom House
We know the human arm can go 118 miles an hour. I've done it a bunch of times.
- [00:19]
Pablo Torre
With pictures right after this ad.
- [00:24]
Announcer
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
- [00:34]
Pablo Torre
This episode is brought to you by Chevy Silverado.
- [00:37]
Sponsor Voice
When it's time for you to ditch.
- [00:38]
Pablo Torre
The blacktop and head off road, do it in a truck that says no to nothing. The Chevy Silverado trail boss get the rugged capability of its Z71 suspension and 2 inch factory lift, plus impressive torque and towing capacity thanks to an available Duramax 3 liter turbo diesel engine. Where other trucks call it quits. You'll just be getting started. Visit chevy.com to learn more. The superlative, Tom, the superlative that you deserve is the foremost expert on throwing in the world. I do, though, before we get to throwing, want to start with a time you caught something.
- [01:21]
Tom House
Okay.
- [01:22]
Pablo Torre
And as a way of introducing you, I presume you have a general guess as to which day of your life.
- [01:29]
Tom House
It would probably be April 8, 1974. I think it was about 8:06pm we'll.
- [01:36]
Announcer
See what Downing does. Al at the belt delivers and he's low. Ball one. And that just adds to the pressures. The crowd booing.
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Tom House
A fast ball from Al Downing to Henry Aaron.
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Announcer
Buckner goes back to the fence. It is gone.
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Tom House
Hit number 715. The only thing I can remember is thinking to myself, it's gonna. It's coming to me.
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Announcer
What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world.
- [02:17]
Tom House
And then I went blank.
- [02:20]
Pablo Torre
The world is waiting for this, obviously.
- [02:24]
Tom House
And there you are right under the think of it as money sign.
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Sponsor Voice
Yeah.
- [02:30]
Tom House
So when we drew straws as the bullpen guys on where we wanted to be, it was basically analytics before our time. It came exactly where if Downing made a mistake, that was where it's going to go. If I would have stood still, it would have. Would have hit me right in the forehead. So it wasn't a great catch. I caught the ball. Bill Buckner said, halsey, give it to me. Give it to me.
- [02:51]
Pablo Torre
I said, no, that's history that you're catching.
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Announcer
A black man is getting a standing.
- [02:56]
Tom House
Ovation in the deep south, then running into home plate. I got there, kind of dove through the pile and I put the ball up in Front of his face. His mom and he were hugging and he took the ball, said, thanks, kid, and I got pushed out of the equation. But people don't realize he was getting death threats and his mom was hugging him because she was going to take the bullet. They had to peel her off of him. People don't realize that she is his.
- [03:27]
Pablo Torre
Bodyguard at that moment.
- [03:29]
Tom House
Exactly. Exactly.
- [03:31]
Pablo Torre
I didn't realize that the guy there with the long hair and the big 70s goggles on.
- [03:38]
Tom House
Shooter's glasses.
- [03:39]
Pablo Torre
Shooter's glasses. Did that guy have a sense that he would become the greatest authority, the greatest, most respected thinker and coach on the subject of throwing things in the history of sports?
- [03:52]
Tom House
No. I had no clue at all.
- [03:58]
Pablo Torre
So I'm just going to assume that you have no clue who the man I'm talking to is. But what I need you to understand is that to be a quarterback or a pitcher at the highest possible level is all about precision physics under public pressure, which is, in other words, a marriage between mechanics and. And mind. And so when the best throwers in the world need help with that marriage, what they do is make a house call. Because Dr. Tom House is the only psychologist who is also a major leaguer and also the author of 22 books. A man whose clientele spans both football and baseball, from Tom Brady to Greg Maddox to Drew Brees to Nolan Ryan to Andrew Luck to Randy Johnson to Tim Tebow, and on and on and on and on. And typically, Tom House is a background character in the lives of these very famous people, not unlike that video of Hank Aaron that we showed you. For instance, you may have missed Tom House being name checked by Eli Manning when Eli went viral for imitating the hip thrust routine of Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott on espn.
- [05:09]
Announcer
It's the Tom House stuff. Here, I'll show you. Peyton. It's about creating torque, right? It's about creating. Close the left hip, open up that. Right. Close the left shoulder, open up the hip.
- [05:23]
Pablo Torre
But when I touched base with Tom recently while I was out in LA, what I found out immediately was that Dr. Tom House is in a different mood these days. At age 77, he is finally ready to fire off some takes.
- [05:39]
Tom House
If you didn't know who they were and you didn't know how they worked a game, you would pick Eli over Peyton every time.
- [05:48]
Pablo Torre
And so what I wanted to do today was climb into Tom House's brain. I wanted to find out why all of these elite athletes, including the kids, continue to Trust this weird PhD who likes teaching his pitchers to throw footballs. For instance, and whose own fastball, if it can even be called that, could not crack 85 miles an hour at Tom's peak.
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Tom House
I think in today's game I wouldn't have been able to even go to junior college cuz I didn't throw hard. But because of this guy, Sandy Koufax.
- [06:21]
Announcer
Sandy into his wind up. Here's the pitch. Swung out and missed a perfect.
- [06:26]
Tom House
I'm sure you might recognize that name.
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Pablo Torre
Familiar with that?
- [06:28]
Tom House
I brought it up the other day and the kids didn't even know who I was talking about. Oh, man, he. When the Dodgers came out in 1962 or 63, they played in the Coliseum, but they did camps around the LA area close to where I grew up. And I was at the clinic. And as the day was winding down, Sandy Koufax walked by me, put his hand on my shoulder and said, what's your name, son? I said, tommy House. He said, tommy House, you have a big league curveball. Let me tell you about curveballs. There are good curveball hitters, but nobody hits a good curveball. You keep throwing that pitch, I'll see you in the big leagues in four years. He was right.
- [07:13]
Pablo Torre
That's like having Michelangelo come by and say, by the way, you're pretty good with this pain.
- [07:17]
Tom House
And you know what that did for me? I put up numbers well enough to be able to hang out with a big league pension.
- [07:24]
Pablo Torre
What was the moment in your career when you began to think, this isn't working out for me the way that.
- [07:32]
Tom House
I hoped it would as a player? Yeah, it started in Boston. Don Zimmer brought me in a game to face a guy named Chris Chambliss.
- [07:43]
Pablo Torre
Yankee.
- [07:44]
Tom House
Yankee, who I had gotten out 35 out of 40 times. And Zim gave me the ball in a tight game and said, I don't give a darn what you do. Don't let him take you deep.
- [07:55]
Announcer
And there's a long drive deep to right field. Back is Evans, and a ball game is over.
- [08:02]
Tom House
And before Zim's finally hit the bench, it was upper deck, game over, walk off, walk off. And that was the beginning. I didn't pitch for 42 days after that. The joy of going to the ballpark every day kind of got diminished a little bit when I knew I was in the doghouse and was probably never going to get a chance to work out of it.
- [08:27]
Pablo Torre
There's a quote from Don Zimmer, manager of the Red Sox, your old boss, he said, quote, I think a lot of his problems were mental. He wanted so much to do well for us. It seemed as though the harder he tried, the worse he got.
- [08:42]
Tom House
He was exactly right. I thought too much and I cared too much and that combination is a performance anxiety problem. So I became a defensive pitcher for about six months to a year after leaving Boston and until I got involved with the research on performance anxieties. Did I figure out a way that even a guy with my limited abilities could actually manufacture and do better with these particular protocols. And that became the beginning of my my research into the PhD program.
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Pablo Torre
So you get a PhD in sports psychology after you retire from baseball.
- [09:24]
Tom House
Right.
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Pablo Torre
Your career as a left handed pitcher professionally is done. You go to grad school and that part you had. What kind of reaction from your folks?
- [09:35]
Tom House
Neither my mom or my dad could understand how anybody could make a living playing sports. In fact, on her deathbed my mom looked me in the face and she said, not Thomas. When are you going to find a real job? Seriously. They enjoyed coming to the games, but her number one priority for my brother and myself? No A no play. If you want to play sports, you have to have straight A's and you can play sports as long as you go to school. That's why I went to school until I was 44.
- [10:26]
Sponsor Voice
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- [11:46]
Pablo Torre
I want to speed run through a very long and colorful and frankly insane career but you get to the Rangers, you get the position fundamentally of guy who's supposed to help these pitchers learn how to throw. And you do. Weird.
- [12:06]
Tom House
Really weird. They were on a limited budget with a franchise that was barely hanging off.
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Announcer
Defeat the Texas Rangers three to two on a little iffy play. Jam him with a fastball.
- [12:20]
Tom House
Hawk Tom Grieve as the gm, was one of those gms that said, we know what doesn't work for us. Let's try something new. So I mortgaged my house to get an aerial system and we brought it into Ranger Stadium and we captured data. Every hitter, every pitcher that went through there. We're talking about cube and high speed motion analysis. And we had two years of data. We've got measurements coming out our yin yang. What is it that we have? I said, you know, everybody's trying to film a million pictures and see what they do. Let's narrow our sample down to 30 of the best. It's a stepwise regression analysis and we found nine variables, starting with balance and posture, that were dependent on anybody that wanted to throw strikes with health. And that was the year that we finished second.
- [13:21]
Announcer
And that'll do it. Yankees in the ninth inning, no runs and two men left on base. And the final score, The Texas Rangers 7 and the Yankees 2.
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Pablo Torre
The throwing the football thing, the idea that here were the Texas Rangers looking like morons throwing a football on the field before games.
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Announcer
A key break with tradition was the use of footballs to improve baseball throwing skills.
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Pablo Torre
What flipped? When did that begin to get buy in from both the team that you worked for and then broadly when Nolan.
- [13:57]
Tom House
Ryan joined the O'Rangers and started throwing the football? At least they shut up publicly.
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Pablo Torre
To look at Nolan Ryan's statistics on Baseball Reference now is to be reminded what the last five years of his career looked like. And it's to marvel at how the he got better.
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Tom House
I'll tell you how he did. He embraced the new information like it was manna from heaven.
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Pablo Torre
I don't have Nolan Ryan as the guy being like, I would like the PhD nerd with the glasses to tell me how to do my job.
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Tom House
And in fact, when he went into the hall of Fame, he actually mentioned that, that Tom had all these weird ideas, but when I tried them, they worked.
- [14:44]
Announcer
I was very fortunate to have a pitching coach by the name of Tom House. And Tom and I are the same age and Tom is a coach that's always on the cutting edge. And I really enjoyed our association together. And he would always come up with new training techniques and because of our friendship and Tom pushing me, I think I got in the best shape of my life during the years that I was with the Rangers. And Tom, I really.
- [15:13]
Tom House
And he literally said I was a better pitcher from age 39 to 46 than I was anytime during the previous 39 years.
- [15:23]
Pablo Torre
So the guy who was at home plate with those glasses wears these goggles in this role. But now your professor Gadget. Yeah, that's what they called you.
- [15:32]
Tom House
Yeah.
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Pablo Torre
And so it's the biomechanical stuff. It's the footage you were collecting, the analysis you were doing, the regressions that you were running. This was the 80s and you were doing this.
- [15:45]
Tom House
Think about a tobacco chewing coach from the 50s and 60s listening to somebody like me talk about proprioneuro facilitation. Can you see him? What's he talking about? It's a baseball throw. It about drag crisis for movement on the ball, about spin, spin about getting it closer, about effective velocity versus real velocity. And it was just. There was nothing wrong with it. It was just before its time.
- [16:18]
Pablo Torre
I understand that if you're going to trace this. Right. Nolan Ryan to Randy Johnson and you go down the line and your tentacles extend all throughout major league baseball. And I understand how that happened. Now, when does the football thing at the highest level become another part of your business?
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Tom House
It began before Drew Brees, but it was rubber stamped by Drew Brees.
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Announcer
Brees into the end zone. Parker, did he get in? Yes. Touchdown San Diego.
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Tom House
I thought it was going to be a male emotional consult and it started off that way. But as luck would have it, that was the season that he blew his shoulder up.
- [17:00]
Announcer
I could see that big defensive lineman land on top of him, drove his arm over his head. And then I saw Drew walking off the field with his arm locked like this and couldn't bring it down. And I said, oh, my goodness, he's dislocated his shoulder out the bottom.
- [17:17]
Tom House
He and I spent the summer post surgery in an aerobics room at the Pacific Athletic Club just figuring out ways to make our arms work without lifting weights or throwing anything. So that became the bodywork that put his shoulder back to function to where he could throw the football. And then the rest is history from there.
- [17:44]
Announcer
Wide open, wide open. And Smith, what a way to do it.
- [17:54]
Tom House
Most accurate passer in the history of the game. All right, so the word kind of gets out and people start tapping on the door. Alex Smith was one of them.
- [18:05]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, my guy.
- [18:07]
Tom House
Yeah. Another testimonial to curiosity and someone trying to make so Even though it was weird, they were coming by to see what was going on. And then the quarterback that picked up for Tom Brady the year he heard his arm, Castle, Matt Castle, was a baseball pitcher at usc. And he said, hey, Tom, is it okay if I bring Tom Brady by? I said, he wants to come by. And I said sure. So Tom showed up. And it happened to be a day when I had 10 year olds. I think I had a javelin thrower and a golfer. Besides a couple quarterbacks and a pitcher. I just like the idea of just.
- [18:46]
Pablo Torre
Like it's you and a bunch of people throwing. Throwing some stuff.
- [18:48]
Tom House
Exactly. And I can remember Tom looking and going, I'm not sure. And as it turned out, we hooked him just because of that. The stuff that he was doing that was new made him feel stuff in his delivery. And one thing that people don't realize about Tom Brady, he is demanding. When you're a coach working with him, every throw is. Is under the microscope. What'd you see? I felt this. What should I have felt? So of all.
- [19:19]
Pablo Torre
So you're being tested.
- [19:20]
Tom House
Oh yeah. And then if he didn't think I was paying attention, he'd screw something up. Wait, wait.
- [19:25]
Pablo Torre
Just to explain this though. So Tom Brady would tank a throw to test you whether you're paying attention?
- [19:31]
Tom House
Yes. And what he didn't realize is that I knew that he knew. The thing that was hardest for him to understand was his front side, I just say closed till the last possible second. He was taught, like all quarterbacks in his generation to pull that front side through to get more on the ball. And it's just the opposite. If you've got a vector going this way, you can't put force on it that way or as much spin. Drew was extremely accurate. With a base that was too broad, he could not throw long effectively. Tom Brady, on the other hand, could throw in the next week, but he had a base that was too narrow. So we spent a good part of the first three years we worked together narrowing Drew Brees stance and spreading Tom Brady out and froing Tom Brady's front side up. They both took volumes of notes. I think Tom told me he has 17 spiral notebooks. Drew had 12 or 13. And both of them, they shared in common. Film study. They would look at film and look at film and look at film and look at film to where they had already played the upcoming game in their head before the game even started. And that's an anxiety reducer and a stress reducer.
- [20:57]
Pablo Torre
What's the biggest difference between a baseball player and a football player when it came to how you learned about their wiring and their methods.
- [21:06]
Tom House
To be honest, quarterbacks are the easiest athlete to work with. They're used to huge amounts of data to be processed quickly and turned into action. Pitchers, on the other hand, don't have a time clock. Well, they do now. But pitchers are a tough sell because they don't have to be on the spot. They're expected to figure out how at.
- [21:32]
Pablo Torre
Their pace, and someone's not trying to actively murder them at the moment.
- [21:36]
Tom House
Exactly. Even though the fear of a football player's fear of getting hit by a baseball is way greater than a pitcher's fear of getting hit by a linebacker. Weird, huh?
- [21:48]
Pablo Torre
Is that right?
- [21:49]
Tom House
Yeah. They're afraid of the baseball. Even though Brady could have been a big league catcher, Drew could have been a big league shortstop. Guaranteed. Take it to the bank.
- [21:58]
Pablo Torre
Why are they afraid of the baseball?
- [22:00]
Tom House
I don't know. Because it hurts.
- [22:13]
Pablo Torre
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- [23:42]
Tom House
It's crazy.
- [23:43]
Pablo Torre
94 is the resting. That's mediocrity.
- [23:46]
Tom House
Yeah. If you're 93, 94, you're lucky to be in the first three rounds of a draft.
- [23:52]
Pablo Torre
Did you ever think that we'd get to a place where I'm looking at again the statistics here that five pitchers last season would average 100 miles an hour?
- [24:02]
Tom House
Not to tip my own cab, but we were the original research on velocity with a 2 pound, 1 pound 6, 54 and 2 ounce ball we both threw and held onto. We saw that from tennis. Tennis players never have bad shoulders on the backside because they hang onto the racket. We took that to the training. You're only as strong as your weakest link. As soon as their weak links started getting matched up with their strong links, velocities went off the chart.
- [24:38]
Announcer
104 from Aroldis Chapman. Strike three.
- [24:44]
Tom House
Call.
- [24:45]
Announcer
105 on the inner edge. Swing and a miss. Strike three. It was 105.5 miles an hour.
- [24:55]
Tom House
Most of the training we do for arm speed now is not done for strength. It's done for the nervous system to understand it can make itself go faster. And you know what the term myelinization means?
- [25:07]
Pablo Torre
What does it mean?
- [25:08]
Tom House
You have this bank of nerves that where you're going to perform something a certain way. And when you're doing it over and over, your brain's not stupid. It's not going to waste time going to 80% of the stuff that doesn't contribute. It's going to go to the things that myelinate. 100 mile an hour fastball. So these kids are reaching a point now where their arms, their central nervous system and their ambient nervous system has been trained that 100 miles is possible.
- [25:38]
Pablo Torre
So myelination I am now realizing when you say myelination it is not referring to myel as in mile per hour. It is M y e l I n a t I o n Exactly. The process of forming a protective insulating layer called myelin around nerve fibers in the central and peripheral nervous systems. Obviously.
- [25:59]
Tom House
Yeah. And when you wrap that it's a fatty tissue substance. When you wrap it with myelin. Then when it gets to the nervous system that it's time to throw that nervous system can go faster than if you spread it out over six or seven different spaces.
- [26:17]
Pablo Torre
Is velocity at this point now that it is achievable in ways and to a frequency that is kind of mind blowing. Does it feel like it's overrated?
- [26:29]
Tom House
You still have to pitch. Let me throw something at. You can laugh at. Over the next few years. We know the human arm can go 118 miles an hour. I've done it A bunch of times with pitchers, can they do it for a game, a season, an inning, whatever. Haven't figured out how yet.
- [26:49]
Pablo Torre
The ceiling though is 118.
- [26:50]
Tom House
Maybe not an everyday picture, but it's possible. I mean, everything I'm looking at, research wise says it's possible. The mechanics of Randy Johnson, the 105 guy from Cuba.
- [27:06]
Pablo Torre
Aroldis Chapman.
- [27:07]
Tom House
Aroldis Chapman. And we looked at all those hard throwers and if you mixed and matched all of them, then you'd have the guy that's throwing 118 today. But. But steroids, everybody beats up and rightful soul because it was illegal don't necessarily mean you can be skilled.
- [27:28]
Pablo Torre
Did you ever do steroids, Tom?
- [27:30]
Tom House
I did not because I was a genius or whatever. I wanted to find out if what they said was true. And I threw 84 miles an hour when I weighed 170 pounds. I threw 84 miles an hour when I weighed 210 pounds. So steroids didn't do anything for me except blow my knees out.
- [27:51]
Pablo Torre
You're a bad pitch man for steroids.
- [27:53]
Tom House
Yeah. The thing that amazes me is a hitter should not be able to catch up with 105 miles.
- [27:59]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I was going to say. Let's turn the camera around the other way. Now you're at the plate.
- [28:04]
Tom House
Okay. If you add together the time it takes the best hitter in the game to swing at a pitch, he should not be able to hit 105 miles an hour. The times don't add up, but they do. It's this ambient nervous system where the decision to swing doesn't go to the brain. It goes to one of the meridians in your shoulder, your elbow. It's like when you touch a hot stove, your finger comes off before you know it's hot.
- [28:32]
Pablo Torre
Right?
- [28:33]
Tom House
That's what's happening with hitters.
- [28:34]
Pablo Torre
You're moving faster than your brain can actually articulate the thought.
- [28:37]
Tom House
Exactly. And I swear to God I don't. When people say that hitting is the single hardest thing to do in sport times 10, that hitter, pitcher, relationship, that dance is gonna be, that's what makes baseball to me as interesting as any sport that's out there.
- [28:55]
Pablo Torre
Just fact checking. Greg Maddox, for instance, a guy you worked with who is famed as the craftiest.
- [29:03]
Tom House
He is the Drew Brees of pitchers.
- [29:05]
Pablo Torre
Average velocity, right? Low 90s, if that.
- [29:14]
Announcer
Would like to congratulate Greg Maddox on his 3,000th career strikeout.
- [29:22]
Tom House
But the genius of Greg Maddox, he threw the velocity where he had the most movement. He could still, even in his later Years he could have thrown 95, 96, but it flattened out. So there's three ways to get a hitter out. You get him out with speed, change of speed and movement. And he was a genius at all those. And a fastball in at 90 is faster than a fastball away at 90. Perceived velocity, one foot of distance, three miles an hour. So what he was was a guy that had a release point closer to home plate than any other six foot pitcher. That could make the ball move and it could change speeds.
- [30:07]
Pablo Torre
Right. So the Randy Johnson thing, just as a matter of comparison. Right. His whole architectural advantage is that he could release the ball because of his height and his wingspan closer to home plate.
- [30:17]
Tom House
Exactly. He released the baseball 48ft 6 inches from home plate. That's the cut of the grass in front of the mound. And he was effectively wild.
- [30:26]
Announcer
This ball obviously just getting away from him. But watch the reaction of John Croc. Would you say his heart is palpitating a bit?
- [30:36]
Tom House
And Randy doesn't mind me saying this. They knew every pitch that Randy was throwing in his big league career.
- [30:43]
Pablo Torre
They knew what was coming.
- [30:44]
Tom House
They knew what was coming. But you couldn't dig in on him because he would do two sliders on the half shell and throw one behind your head without even trying. So he was what we call effectively wild. The fear factor hitting off of Randy was I'm just going to take my chances. I don't want to know what's coming.
- [31:02]
Pablo Torre
Yeah, various pitchers as well as birds learn that.
- [31:05]
Tom House
Exactly.
- [31:06]
Pablo Torre
So when it comes to the competitive advantage that arises or diminishes when everybody's throwing faster and faster. And Greg Maddox, for all of his craft, is glacial in comparison. What does this say about the future of the soft tosser? You coach Jamie Moyer.
- [31:25]
Tom House
What goes around comes around. Right now every staff in the big leagues is looking for a pitcher like Jamie Maher towards shortstop.
- [31:36]
Announcer
Easy hop for Valdez. He's got it across the diamond in time. Jaime Moyer at the age of 47 has thrown a two hit shutout.
- [31:47]
Tom House
Jamie Moyer was me only really good at being me. Where you just run him out there and it may be ugly one game, but at the end of the year he's give you innings, he's going to hold games close and he can be productive. You can count on him. He's never going to be on the DL. What's the biggest problem right now with baseball? Half the pitching staff.
- [32:06]
Pablo Torre
Injuries.
- [32:07]
Tom House
Yeah. There's no durability. So right now in the spring training conversations that I have, everybody's looking for a durable right hander or left hander that they can literally abuse without hurting his arm. And that's going to be someone that doesn't throw overly hard or overly soft, but knows how to pitch and can give it to you anytime you want to look at it. So the innings eater the innings eater.
- [32:31]
Pablo Torre
Is suddenly even more valuable now.
- [32:33]
Tom House
You got to save your studs and you can't have 12 studs on a staff. You got to have someone that can eat it so that the stud can perform right? That's where it's going, right? And that's how guys like me will get back into the big leagues.
- [32:48]
Pablo Torre
You turned Tim Tebow into a Baseball player.
- [32:51]
Announcer
You wouldn't normally have this many fans.
- [32:53]
Pablo Torre
Or this many reporters or a news.
- [32:55]
Announcer
Helicopter show up to cover what amounts to minor league study hall, but they were all there Monday to see Tim.
- [33:03]
Tom House
Tebow make his official debut as a.
- [33:05]
Announcer
Minor league baseball player.
- [33:07]
Tom House
Regrets reflections he was 10,000 reps behind as a quarterback and the same amount as a hitter. If he could have done one or the other with enough Milan, he could have played both. He could have been a solid backup, but his entourage didn't merit even though it was a good entourage being a backup quarterback and having that many things in the clubhouse. Everything you see about Tim is true. But again, he was short on reps as a quarterback throwing and short on reps as a hitter hitting.
- [33:43]
Pablo Torre
What did you learn working with him about what it means to do your job?
- [33:47]
Tom House
What it means is when you're behind the eight ball at the elite level, it's the same thing that happened to Michael Jordan.
- [33:55]
Announcer
I imagine I turn him loose on a 30 count they do and he pops it up on the infield under the ball. Zambrano makes the cut. Michael Jordan is getting by on sheer athletic ability and hard work. Just an average minor league baseball player. When he was the best basketball player.
- [34:18]
Tom House
Ever, Michael Jordan was probably the best athlete on the planet. But when I threw batting practice to him, I look him right in the face and I say as long as your is pointing down, you're not going to hit the ball in off the plate. Long arm man in can't hit. If he would have played baseball from the start, he probably could have been a really good big leaguer.
- [34:42]
Pablo Torre
Could you turn someone like Lamar Jackson into a pitcher?
- [34:46]
Tom House
I'll tell you what, he's a pretty good athlete. You just hate it when you find.
- [34:49]
Announcer
It on Monday and not during the game. Jackson look at that cut. Look at the Ravens down the Field.
- [34:59]
Tom House
But again, being on a mound with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth is different than being behind center with 20 seconds going in the last quarter. You're out there on an island by yourself. And I don't know if he has that makeup. If you're a pitcher and you can't make a pitch in that situation, it's toast.
- [35:23]
Pablo Torre
So the similar question right, of could you. Could you turn Paul Skeens into a quarterback?
- [35:29]
Announcer
He's made it six in a row to start the day. Paul schemes.
- [35:33]
Tom House
No, he couldn't. He's too wired to pitch a baseball now. He throws a football. I don't know if you're aware. No, but he throws a football.
- [35:41]
Pablo Torre
Of course he does.
- [35:41]
Tom House
As part of his training program.
- [35:44]
Pablo Torre
This is a speed round now. Do you think Shohei Ohtani should keep pitching? No, no.
- [35:49]
Tom House
I think he's a hitter. He's proved all he needs to throw, all he needs to do as a pitcher against Miguel Vargas.
- [35:56]
Announcer
Swing and a miss. Shohei Ohtani, the spectacular one with his 11th strikeout of the night.
- [36:03]
Tom House
I think his value to the to the ball club is on the field every day. And I'm going to say this with. I hope I'm wrong. I don't think his shoulders can handle it.
- [36:17]
Pablo Torre
What are you seeing there?
- [36:19]
Tom House
It's a combination of a bunch of stuff. Primarily the thresholds with heavy weight training are really good for hitting but not good for pitching. And the everyday stresses of throwing down the hill. When you generate energy on flat ground, the most you can get out of flat ground is about four times body weight and foot pounds of energy. When you're going down the mound, you get about six times body weight. I don't think his shoulders can handle that. The deceleration. I haven't ever worked with him. I'm only looking from afar. I'm looking at. His mechanics are very good. His makeup is outstanding. He's a dude. But I don't think his body can do both.
- [37:00]
Pablo Torre
But the pleasure. Did you watch him? And with self evidently unprecedented.
- [37:06]
Tom House
Right?
- [37:07]
Pablo Torre
But you're saying for his own long term interest.
- [37:12]
Tom House
Yes.
- [37:12]
Pablo Torre
Just kidding.
- [37:14]
Tom House
I think his hall of Fame life is going to be from an everyday player.
- [37:27]
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- [38:07]
Pablo Torre
So by this point, I think it's clear that I could talk to Dr. Tom House and mine his brain for takes on the future of sports for an extraordinarily long time. Tom, the more I think about it, was a pioneer. He was using science and regressions and video analysis to evolve the art of throwing, melding it truly with rigorous psychological study, turning it all into a science. And all this was decades before the value of that scientific analysis became self evident and omnipresent in some form all across sports. But the skill Tom has that is even more rare, the skill that so many data nerds still can't hack their way around, is the thing that I consider his real gift, the gift of communication. It's his ability to articulate what is in his head to others, to really connect with the people who are searching for his wisdom, me included. And Tom's future in that regard is something that I wanted to find out about too. How did you discover that you had Parkinson's?
- [39:17]
Tom House
I love to throw. And I was, if not, I was one of the best BP pitchers in the history of baseball. And I noticed when I was throwing BP that the ball would get away from me. I'd throw a ball that would hit someone in the foot. And I also noticed when I was walking that I was shuffling and leaning forward, and I thought, okay, something's wrong. Went and got tested. Thought I had a brain tumor or something. Couldn't find anything there. And then one of my best friends, we were walking toward practice range, he said, tom, I think you have Parkinson's. I said, all right, how do I find out? He said, call this guy. So I got tested and I did. They figured I'd been misdiagnosed for about three years. So I've had it for about 18 years.
- [40:09]
Pablo Torre
Wow.
- [40:10]
Tom House
And then when I figured out the prognosis, I said, this doesn't look too good for me. And I said, okay, let's figure out what we can do. So I took everything that I've been doing with elite sports and started throwing at Parkinson's people. And we're not curing it, but we're slowing it down.
- [40:28]
Pablo Torre
I like the idea of your brain being trained on that problem.
- [40:31]
Tom House
Well, if it can be figured out, I'll stumble into it. And doctor that I was working with at the time said, you know, you have to. It doesn't kill you. But you don't die from it, you die with it. But your quality of life is going to be harder on you than you think. Then I found out that dopamine is the reason we have Parkinson's. If your brain stops producing dopamine, then all the symptoms like I'm showing right now, where I start to quiver and my voice goes away, that's my price to pay. But if you can keep your dopamine up and add in something else, they can give you synthetic dopamine. But you keep having to take more and more and more just to hold your own. So I made up my mind. En, kathalenes and endorphins are basically brothers and sisters of dopamine. It's an ene, it's an upper. It's a feel good thing. And they've taken my skin cells. My skin cells are becoming the stem cells that they can inject at the base of my brain to make sure that dopamine production starts again. I'm involved with that research for the last 12 years. Most important thing is not to be a burden for my wife. And the second most important thing, I've got to get what's in my head out to you kids before I punch my ticket.
- [41:56]
Pablo Torre
You're 77 now.
- [41:57]
Tom House
I'll be 78 April 29th.
- [41:59]
Pablo Torre
Okay. Happy early birthday.
- [42:01]
Tom House
Thank you.
- [42:04]
Pablo Torre
I believe that if you have just listened to this interview, you would not have necessarily known that you have been handling Parkinson's for 18 years.
- [42:14]
Tom House
So you don't notice my voice when you mention it. Sure, it's the good Lord paying me back for all the bull I did.
- [42:22]
Pablo Torre
Way back when, but I read at one point it was an interview you gave in August 2021 that you are preparing to go on vacation for the first time in your life.
- [42:33]
Tom House
Yeah, I've been on a vacation my whole life. Being able to play. I've never worked a day in my life. I'm playing every day. And the joy of going to the field and working with a 12 year old or coming hanging out with you still keeps me going. I'll be driving home tonight. My adrenaline will carry me because I had a really good time doing this. And you brought memories back that haven't come to the surface for a long time. So thank you for that.
- [43:01]
Pablo Torre
No, Tom, the ability that you have to explain complicated things, recall ancient things, and then look into the future is a rare thing.
- [43:15]
Tom House
And I think the future is really good. And you love baseball. So do I. It's just. It's just now figuring out what it needs to do. Baseball is going to get better, and it's trying to change. The greatest right we have in this world is to change what's the hardest thing for us to do. Change.
- [43:34]
Pablo Torre
So at the end of every episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out a show about finding stuff out, Tom House, what did you find out today?
- [43:42]
Tom House
I found out that there's not enough of you out there. Everybody's looking for the immediate laugh, buzz, whatever. There's stuff that's way deeper, that does really influence kids. Everybody thinks that if you talk about being Ohtani, that you can be. Not everybody can be Ohtani, but you can be the best you that you can be. And that's what we lack in this country. Everybody's about outcome. They're not about process. And that is killing us.
- [44:14]
Pablo Torre
Dr. Tom House, you know how to coach someone up. Even podcasters.
- [44:20]
Tom House
Thank you. So let's try to do this again. Find a topic that nobody else would touch.
- [44:26]
Pablo Torre
Yeah.
- [44:26]
Tom House
And we'll do it again.
- [44:27]
Pablo Torre
You're our guy now.
- [44:29]
Tom House
Yeah. And I'll tell the truth. What are they gonna do? What are they gonna do to me? That's the attitude you have to have.
- [44:36]
Pablo Torre
What a goddamn. This has been. Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.