By Meghan Rosen
Got baseball? Spending one’s youth playing catch is good for the bones, with benefits that last a lifetime.
Years of hurling balls boosted bone size, mass and strength in the throwing arms of current and former professional ballplayers, researchers report March 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Though bone mass withered away when players retired, some of the extra size and strength stuck around — even 50 years after the athletes last played ball.