There is so much interesting material in this Bleacher Report story on Justin Verlander. Michigan Live concentrated on how Kate Upton helped him through depression, but just as interesting is how a doctor discovered his physical problems:

“Your shoulder’s the victim,” she says. “That doesn’t mean that’s where the problem is.”

She asked Verlander to squat. He said he couldn’t. Not since the surgery.

Gow put a foam roller beneath the balls of his feet.

Now try, she said.

So he did.

Bingo.

Verlander’s problem was that he wasn’t flexible. At all. That was the source of his pain, his rapid decline. It started long ago, she said. Old tissue, left untended, had built up around bones and joints in his feet and ankles. Then it spread upward from there. To compensate for his decreasing range of motion, Verlander had been slowly changing his movements every season until essentially he was throwing just using his arm.

“It was really quite interesting,” Gow says. “He was this amazing pitcher in spite of himself.”

She took care to teach him what was happening. She embraced explanation as much as rehabilitation; for her, explanation was rehabilitation. “How else,” she says, “can you heal?”

I wonder if Felix Hernandez could use a trip to Dr. Gow.