By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/04/27/baseball-injuries-should-mean-never-having-to-say-youre-sorry/Clay Buchholz, Phillies pitcher, recuperating from surgery to repair a small tear in his flexor pronator mass, showed up at
Citizens Bank Park Wednesday to see the Phillies tangle with the Marlins. MLB.com’s Todd Zolecki, a sober reporter,
reported
Buchholz apologised to general manager Matt Klentak “and others.”
Apologised, mind you.
Another sober reporter, NBC’s Bill Baer, says Buchholz was out of line. Not in the way you usually think when you see that
phrase. “It’s saddening to me, and indicative of the general anti-labor culture in sports, that a player feels obligated to
apologize for getting injured on the job,” Baer
writes.
“Injuries are nothing new for Buchholz, which might have factored into his decision to apologize,” Baer continues. “Red Sox
fans got on his case quite a bit over the years for his propensity to land on the disabled list. But it wasn’t like Buchholz was
taking unnecessary risks; he simply did his job, which entails doing a lot of unhealthy movement with his arm. Buchholz
owes no one an apology.”
On 11 April, Buchholz was merely the first victim of a 14-4 chain of human rights abuses the Mets inflicted on the Phillies,
with a lot of help from Yoenis Cespedes’s three bombs on the night. He may have been pitching with what I knew only to
have been “a forearm strain,” coming out in the fourth inning. At least he could brag Cespedes didn’t single him out for
particular use, misuse, and abuse.
He hadn’t pitched particularly well in his first Phillies start, either. But it’s to wonder whether he hadn’t experienced an
issue in that game, a 7-4 loss to the Reds. It’s even more to wonder why he felt compelled to apologise for being hurt,
as Baer said, while doing nothing worse than his job. This wasn’t Madison Bumgarner
getting a little too high spirited
aboard a dirt bike in Denver last week.
Like it or not, baseball isn’t an injury free game. Fans for generations have sustained at once a deep admiration for players
who soldier onward despite injuries and a deep contempt for players who become injured even on the job. Both can and
do reach irrational extremes. Especially when baseball people exhibit the same admiration and contempt.
There have been managers, coaches, front office personnel, and even teammates to whom a player’s injury in the line of
duty is still a black mark. And there are too many writers, commentators, and fans who think likewise. Never mind that
injuries in the line of duty have actually helped cost some players Hall of Fame credentials in the long term.
The 1969 Cubs’ collapse had many causes, and one of them may well have been players afraid to speak up when injured
for fear of Leo Durocher’s none-too-benign wrath; Durocher was actually foolish enough to dismiss the injured as quitters.
Bo Belinsky, career dissipating as it was for other reasons, wasn’t the only member of the 1965 Phillies to report in due
course that manager Gene Mauch, post-pennant collapse, took injuries as a personal affront and even dog-housed players
over them.
Apologising to a player for inflicting an injury upon him is one thing. Last week, Dustin Pedroia received an apology from
Manny Machado after Machado’s hard slide inadvertently lifted his legs enough to spike Pedroia. Pedroia accepted the
apology graciously and soon had to call out teammates over reliever Matt Barnes throwing one toward Machado’s head
two games later.
But players compelled to apologise or atone for receiving injuries incurred in the line of duty? You appreciate their sense
of right even as you question a culture that nudges them to it.
Hideki Matsui suffered a wrist fracture trying to catch a short fly in early 2006. He underwent surgery for the injury (he’d
miss four months of the season) and, as
The New York Times reported the day after the operation, the usually gracious
but composed outfielder apologised: “I feel very sorry and, at the same time, very disappointed to have let my teammates
down.”
Said Yankee manager Joe Torre: “The most important thing now is really not what’s missing for the Yankees. It’s what he’s
going to do with all his spare time he never had before.” Now baseball’s chief executive in charge of discipline, Torre took
the proper stance even if he resorted to a sort of gallows humour to support it. Yet the apologies have continued apace.
Twins relief pitcher Glen Perkins tweeted an apology to fans last year after suffering a torn labrum and undergoing surgery.
Make note of some of his expressions: “Am I disappointed that I can’t contribute to our team this year while getting paid a
sh@t ton of money? Yes, it makes me sick. Getting paid for not doing anything to help was the thing I feared most when I
signed my contract. I didn’t want to be the overpaid guy.”
That’s another thing. People of all income levels have a very hard time sympathising with a fellow making six figures a year
without him being injured on the job. With him being injured on the job, there comes a suck-it-up harrumph anyway. And
sucking it up oftentimes equals disasters. Ask the Nationals, whose broadcast analyst Rob Dibble lost his gig after telling
Stephen Strasburg to suck it up, kid, when Strasburg once sat out a start with elbow soreness . . . and underwent Tommy
John surgery ten days later.
Perkins’s teammate Joe Mauer, he who signed a $184 million, eight-year contract extension after his 2009 MVP season, but
who suffered 1) a knee injury in 2010, leading to offseason surgery; and, 2) an in-game concussion in 2013, has sucked it
up since. And, concurrently, seen his performances drop,
admitting last year to vision trouble stemming from that concussion.
“I don’t want that to be kind of an excuse. If I’m out there, I’m out there,” catcher-turned-first-baseman Mauer told a
St. Paul
Pioneer-Press writer, Brian Murphy, in an apparent apologetic tone. “That’s just the way I am. There are times I’ve gone up to
the plate and I just couldn’t pick up the ball. That’s part of the frustration because I’m trying to do everything I can to get
back. It just takes time.”
None of which stopped another
Pioneer-Press writer, Bob Sansevere, from
dismissing Mauer as a malcontented wimp: “Face it,
the guy is brittle wherever you play him. So why not let him play where he’s happiest? Maybe he’ll get his batting average
back over .300 if he’s not in sulk mode . . . Bottom line here: The new manager has to stop the Mauer coddling and have him
catch again.”
Sansevere never once mentioned the 2013 concussion in the original column. He soon edited it to include, get ready, “News
flash: You can suffer a concussion anywhere on the field, including while playing first base.” Or, if you’re a first baseman but
suffer one on a hard play sliding into second base, as Justin Morneau did in 2010.
Morneau’s career was almost completely ruined by that and a subsequent concussion or two, both with the Twins and the
Rockies. (He played half a season with the White Sox last year—recovering from elbow surgery first.) Do the Sanseveres of the
world still await the apology that no one, including Morneau himself, should compel him to deliver?
