Member-only story
Meet the Crotch Doc
Dr. William Meyers is medicine’s most prominent expert on core injuries, and some of the top groins in sports owe it all to his surgical handiwork
Roy Oswalt tried to gut it out — literally. In 2003, Oswalt was in his third year as a starting pitcher for the Houston Astros. He was a rising star but had developed a mysterious injury: Whenever he threw, Oswalt felt a sharp, sudden pain in his groin. “It was like someone had stabbed you,” he recalls. And the pain moved around, from his pubic area down to his inner thighs or up to his gut.
A pitcher creates a burst of kinetic energy by pushing off his dominant leg and taking a long stride forward as he throws the ball. When we say a pitcher has a strong arm, we really mean he has a powerful core and legs. Unable to stride powerfully, Oswalt was reduced to mediocrity.
One day, before a game, Mike Hampton, who pitched for the Atlanta Braves, told Oswalt about a medical warlock, a miracle worker, a veritable exorcist of groin pain: Dr. William Meyers, a surgeon in Philadelphia who’d fixed the same debilitating problem for Hampton. In June, while pitching against the Yankees in New York, Oswalt left in anguish after only an inning. The next day, he went to Philly and saw Meyers, who, in his calm, avuncular manner, told…
