Last Friday night, Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas fell down in a heap after beating out a dribbler to the right side of the pitcher’s mound.
The diagnosis: ruptured patella tendon. Out for the season.
This will be the second straight season Casas will be hors de combat. Last year, he missed most of the summer due to a rib cage injury. Now comes the knee. Apparently, Casas walked under the same ladder, or crossed the same black cat, as Trevor Story, who rolled snake eyes the previous two seasons with serious injuries.
You have to feel for anyone, but especially a professional athlete, who works to rehab an injury only to get hurt again the following year. Ted Johnson of the New England Patriots had that happen to him. And then there’s New England’s David Andrews, who had a major heart issue two years ago, only to have another season-ending injury last year.
When one of these guys stands up behind a table with the team logo behind him, all happy and hopeful, after signing a multi-year million-dollar contract, he’s the envy of all he sees. We look at these players, in their expensive suits, dangling with chains, and we say, “Wouldn’t I love to be him. Even if it’s only for a day.”
But we don’t see the whole picture. We didn’t see Casas last July doing stretching or strength training exercises to shore up those ribs so such an injury wouldn’t happen again. Story fractured his shoulder last season and didn’t get back on the field until August or September. He worked all winter to rehabilitate himself even more.
So you had to feel good for him when he popped that home run over the monster seats on opening day. It was one of those instances – rare these days – when the hard work got the desired result.
Casas may have been struggling, but he was in there, taking his cuts, when he got hurt again. That has to be an empty feeling. Your body’s playing Whack-a-Mole. You clear one hurdle, and the next one, possibly even bigger, rises up in front of you. Suddenly, life becomes an endless series of MRIs and physical therapy. You sit on the bench wearing a uniform, but all you are is a decoration.
At the same time, you have to listen to all these “know-it-alls” who sit in judgment of you. You’re brittle. Can’t stay on the field. Trade him for someone who can play.
If you’re me, you might say the pitcher who, once again, has a sore arm and now has to have Tommy John surgery after three stints on the injured list with “tendonitis,” has been ill-used by an incompetent medical staff.
Professional athletes just aren’t the lazy bums so many people think they are. They’re fully aware that their bodies are their living. With few exceptions, they treat those bodies like temples. We may hear about some of the ones who don’t take it seriously, but by and large, these athletes are serious about what they do.
Actually, the older we are, the more we can sympathize with the Triston Casases and Trevor Storys of the world. Or we should. Because we’re all there. I’m 71, and life for me is an endless series of waking up in the morning wondering what strange pain is going to greet me today. I get it. And I don’t have to fall awkwardly on the baseball field to find out, either. All I have to do is trip. Or step wrong. Or put my socks on.
We boomers suffered every time Bobby Orr hurt his knee, and all of us, at least around here, saluted him for all the times he rehabbed it only to reinjure it. How many pitchers keep coming back, only to get one more case of tendonitis? Gordon Hayward was never the same after shattering his ankle, but he kept trying. All you can do is have some sympathy for these fellows when all that work goes for naught, and admire their tenacity.
If the rest of us only had half as much.
