Published: July 26, 2008 06:13 pm         

Former coach, umpire hopes to educate, develop players through Upper Deck Training Center

A recent article in USA Today revealed an alarming statistic.

Dr. James Andrews, a renowned sports medicine specialist in Alabama, performed nine Tommy John surgeries from 1995-98. From 1999-2006, the total soared to 209.

Tommy John surgery is a procedure in which a ligament in an injured elbow is replaced by a tendon from somewhere else in the body. The operation is named after the New York Yankees pitcher who was the first to have it done more than 30 years ago.

Closer to home, Lewisburg native Seth McClung had the surgery in 2002, his rookie year with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The surgery is usually performed on professional and college athletes. What makes the aforementioned statistics alarming is that all of those surgeries were performed on high school baseball players.

Kids ages 14-18 were having major reconstructive surgery before they were able to vote.

Tim Epling has seen the statistics. He’s familiar with the trend and is appalled by it.

“Tommy John surgeries, arm injuries are at an all-time high, and it’s because the kids are not prepared to play,” Epling said. “When I saw that, I knew there was a need. There has to be an education process.”

Epling, a former minor league umpire, wanted to do something about the situation. Too many players are getting hurt because their involvement in baseball is cut dramatically in the offseason, then they try to go full-bore in the spring.

That vision has finally become reality with the opening of the Upper Deck Training Center. Located on Ragland Road in Beckley, the state-of-the-art facility serves to give baseball and softball players year-round instruction in both hitting and pitching.

“This is something that has been planned for five or six years,” Epling said. “I have been wanting to do this for a long, long time. We had been looking for a building (but) we couldn’t find anything. Finally, some things opened up where we were able to work it out to have the facility we have now.”

Professional pitchers go through more than a month of spring training — even a little longer if they don’t make the major league club — before the season even starts. Each pitcher also has his own throwing and workout regimen that he follows in the offseason.

In college, the preseason begins in January, often more than a month before the start of the season. College teams also have a fall workout season.

At the high school level — particularly here in West Virginia, where the weather is often not conducive to the game — the season begins shortly after teams are able to get in their required number of practice days. From there, games are played practically every day when summer leagues are factored in.

This, Epling says, is a big problem in the players’ development.

“The need that we have here in this area — there is nowhere in this area for kids to train,” he said. “Kids play a lot of ball. They play all the time, but what happened to the practice? What happened to the development? High school coaches do not have the chance to develop their (players). They can’t. That changed back in 1980 when coaches were not allowed to coach in the summer (after a Secondary School Activities Commission ruling), like they can in other states.”

The facility offers serious instruction for players as young as age 9, all the way up to the college game. In some workouts, in fact, players of all ages work simultaneously.

State-of-the-art technology also will be used to analyze an individual player’s strengths and weaknesses.

“What you see with the naked eye is not what you (really) see,” Epling said. “You have to have certain types of equipment and understand it. You have to take 1,000 frames per second and be able to look at a kid and see what body types are out of alignment when he throws. That’s going to be part of it.

“We have computerized pitching machines, which is totally out of this world. We are the only ones in the state of West Virginia who have the simulators.”

That doesn’t mean the facility will be totally devoid of the primitive side of workouts.

“We’ve got the technology, but then again we’ve got old-school work,” Epling said. “We’re going to be working out with tires, chains and ropes. It’s brutal, but it’s developing the player.”

To put into perspective what the facility will offer, Epling told the story of a day two years ago when he and a friend were on a scouting and recruiting trip in Maryland.

The friend pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out and just watched a group of kids playing pickup baseball.

It was as if he were Ray Kinsella watching “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and the rest of the ghosts from the 1919 Chicago White Sox playing in his cornfield on “Field of Dreams.”

“He says, ‘I’ve not seen that in over 15 years,’” Epling said. “He sat there and he says, ‘That’s what’s missing.’

“The training facility is taking the place of your backyard baseball.”

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For more information on the Upper Deck Training Center, call Epling at 304-673-2160.

— E-mail: gfauber@register-herald.com