Royals at Orioles May 26, 2012
Have you noticed what the all those Royals players are wearing on their thumbs when they hits those well placed RBIs?
Batting all the time can aggravate and cause some serious pain, especially when MLB is playing at least three games a week.
So what are these baseball players wearing on their thumbs??
And the answer is….
It’s called a “prohitter.”
After speaking to Dr. Clint Walker, one of our hand surgeons at Kansas City Bone & Joint Clinic, and an avid baseball fan, he recommends these on occasion to his athletic patients that complain of aches and pains in the thumb after starting the baseball or softball season.
Source: Dick’s sporting goods
Imagine the force the bat and your hand takes when it collides with a ball that is going at 80 to 90mph. It is quite an impact that is going through the bat and the hands. The idea of the Prohitter is to pad, lessen the force, or percussion that is placed on the thumb over the sesamoid bone when the bat connects with the baseball or softball.
Our thumbs have a bone which is embedded into the tendon that makes the thumb flex down into a fist, similar to our knee caps, called the sesamoid bone. Just like our knees can get tendonitis, so can the thumb. For this particular problem, it is called sesamoiditis, or inflammation at the sesamoid area.
Source: Flickr