Pablo Torre Finds Out
House Call: Why the World's Best Pitchers and Quarterbacks Seek This Man's Advice
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
He got the Sandy Koufax seal of approval, then re-trained Nolan Ryan in his forties. He upgraded Drew Brees into one of the most accurate passers of all time, then went tête-à-tête with Tom Brady. He even tried turning Michael Jordan and Tim Tebow into baseball players. But for legendary pitching coach Dr. Tom House, the science of throwing is all in the mind, from performance anxiety to the human nerve bank. And now, at 77, he's looking into a future without Shohei Ohtani on the mound — and a 118-mile-an-hour fastball coming for your head. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Dr. Tom House and why is he important?
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 going to find out what this sound is.
We know the human arm can go 118 miles an hour. I've done it a bunch of times with pictures.
Right after this ad.
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
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. Okay. And as a way of introducing you, I presume you have a general guess as to which day of your life.
It would probably be April 8th, 1974. I think it was about 8.06 p.m.
A fastball from Al Downing to Henry Aaron. He hit number 715. The only thing I can remember is thinking to myself, it's coming to me. 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.
And then I went blank. The world is waiting for this, obviously.
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Chapter 2: What significant moment did Tom House witness in baseball history?
And before Zim's family 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.
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.
It 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 research into the PhD program.
So you get a PhD in sports psychology after you retire from baseball. Right. 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?
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, Now, 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.
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