HAMPDEN, Maine — Rece Poulin’s first two opportunities to pitch this spring admittedly left room for improvement.
“Accuracy is my struggle right now,” said Poulin, an eighth-grader at Reeds Brook Middle School who turns 14 on Tuesday.
But those who monitor Poulin’s pitching progress closest may be forgiven for a light touch on any criticism.
Those outings, one for his middle-school ‘A’ team and one in Junior League competition, were his first appearances on the mound in more than two years.
And while Poulin’s development until that point of his career was as a right-hander, an injury and subsequent surgery left him no option other than to learn to throw with his other arm if he ever wanted to pitch again.
So, remarkably, he did, and while his mechanics as a left-hander may not be perfect yet, the transition has featured steady progress.
“You might think there’d be a little hitch in something,” said his mother, Nancy Poulin. “But if you didn’t know he never threw that way before and just walked up to a game he was in, I don’t know if you’d necessarily notice.”
Arm surgery
Rece Poulin was full of pride when he made the Reeds Brook ‘A’ team as an 11-year-old sixth-grader in 2013.
But it wasn’t long after earning that roster spot when he came home from school one day and couldn’t straighten his right arm — his throwing arm.
X-rays were normal, and the original diagnosis was a stress fracture that sidelined him for the remainder of the middle-school season as well as the summer Little League schedule.
Rest resulted in improvement, to the point that by December, he was cleared to resume a throwing program with his father, Hampden Academy varsity baseball coach McLean Poulin.
Regular, light workouts followed until one day when Rece Poulin tried throwing from the pitching distance of 60 feet, six inches.
“He threw one pitch and looked kind of funny, then threw one more and said, ‘Dad, we’re all done,’” said his father.
Pain had returned to his right elbow, and Poulin soon was referred to Dr. Luke S. Oh, a Boston-based orthopaedic surgeon best known as team physician for the New England Patriots and the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer and a consultant for the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins.
Oh quickly determined the cause of the pain, adolescent osteochondritis dissecans. It is a condition in which the elbow joint surface breaks down, damaging blood vessels and hindering blood flow to the bone, which eventually can cause that part of the bone to die.
Poulin underwent surgery on March 21, 2014, to create channels in his elbow that would promote blood flow, and while the surgery was a success, the original plan called for a one-year recovery period before he could resume throwing at all — and no more pitching.
“Two positions he’ll never play are pitcher and catcher,” said Nancy Poulin, citing the volume of throws required for each of those tasks. “He was upset with the pitcher part of it just because he enjoyed doing it, it was something he liked.
“But on the other side of it, Dr. Oh told him he’d never pitch again, and Rece looked at him and said, ‘Yes I will,’” she said. “Dr. Oh kind of stopped, and Rece said, ‘I’m gonna pitch lefty.’”
A turn to the left
The notion of becoming a left-handed pitcher didn’t come completely from a youngster’s vivid imagination.
“The first year when I couldn’t play after I fractured my elbow I wanted to at least do something, so I asked my dad if I could throw a little lefty, at least try it,” said Rece Poulin. “So I did and just kept going for a while so I could play pass and stay in the game a little.
“When I found out I couldn’t pitch at all [right-handed], I thought, ‘I’ve been throwing left-handed for a little bit, so I might as well do it forever,’” he said.
But envision trying to throw anything with the opposite hand, and quickly understand what Poulin was up against when he first attempted this means of being able to pitch competitively again.
“It wasn’t pretty,” said Nancy Poulin. “[We] went out the first day he threw lefty, and if the ball wasn’t skyrocketing over my head, it went straight into the ground. It probably took a good three, four or five days for him to be able to consistently get it to me in the air, not really on target but at least to me or to McLean.”
The improvement of his right elbow after surgery came significantly ahead of schedule, so much so, that by August 2014, he was cleared to start throwing again with Oh suggesting he use the Tommy John surgery recovery program developed by Dr. James Andrews.
That turned out to be just half of the rehab process.
“When he finally got cleared in August and we could start the throwing program in September, his reaction to me and to Dr. Oh was, ‘Well, if I’ve got to throw three days a week, I’ll throw my rehab three days a week righty,’ and then he looked at me and asked, ‘Can I do pitching progressions lefty on the same days?’” said McLean Poulin. “I said definitely, so when we threw, he’d do his rehab righty, then put his other glove on and go through all the pitching progressions lefty all the way to long toss.
“All throughout the winter from September to March he threw three days a week lefty and stretched that out to long toss,” he said. “That really helped him with his arm strength, and going through those pitching progressions is strictly working on form and technique, so he was getting that, too.”
Rece Poulin also played outfield and first base in a University of Maine fall league to further reacquaint himself with the game, and by March, he had strengthened his right arm sufficiently to be ready to play shortstop right-handed at Reeds Brook full time this spring.
“I work at the high school,” said Reeds Brook ‘A’ baseball coach Marcus Nadeau, “and Rece and his dad came in all winter long throwing at night, and I was able to see from behind the scenes his progression from his first time throwing left-handed to where he is now, and it’s unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“To overcome an injury like that, especially being so young with it coming in his sixth-grade year, is awesome. I’ve never seen a drive in anybody, not just his age but anybody, like that,” he said.
But pitching in a game for the first time left-handed was a much more public challenge.
“When I pitched in my first middle-school game I had never faced a live batter, so that was a little different,” said Poulin. “I was really aiming where I was throwing instead of just throwing, but once I settled down and realized it was just me and the catcher playing pass, I definitely did a lot better.”
Poulin has since pitched in his first Junior League game on a team coached by his father, who believes the next step in his son’s pitching rebirth will be based largely on repetition throughout the summer season.
This second chance at a pitching career isn’t about personal pursuits.
“It’s not just myself being on the mound and throwing, but I like just having my teammates backing me up and having them there believing in me,” Poulin said. “That’s what’s really pushing me.”
But there also are individual goals that would provide any kid motivation.
“Honestly, for me I’d like to go to the next level playing in the field and not pitching, but as far as pitching right now, I’d definitely like to get some innings at the high school level,” Poulin said. “That’s my overall goal right now, to get to where a normal pitcher would be.”
