It’s all too easy to get swept along by the joy of Spring Training beginning again for another year, but spare a thought for players such as Kris Benson.\u00c2\u00a0 As you would have probably read, Benson has suffered a partially torn rotator cuff and his 2007 season is currently in the balance.\u00c2\u00a0 The Orioles are being cautiously optimistic in hoping that surgery may not be necessary and that a substantial period of rehab will do the trick (which would keep him out for a few months).\u00c2\u00a0 Benson himself seems less confident and it looks as though he will end up going under the knife.\u00c2\u00a0 If so, Benson will not pitch again until the 2008 season.\u00c2\u00a0 What a terrible way to start your Spring Training camp.<\/p>\n
Every year you hear similar stories.\u00c2\u00a0 Mike Hampton, for example, will come to Spring Training eager to make up for his lost 2006 campaign.\u00c2\u00a0 Francisco Liriano will be sorely missed by all baseball fans this year as he becomes the latest player to works his way back from Tommy John surgery.\u00c2\u00a0 For all the improvements in conditioning work and medical science, injuries are always going to be a part of sport.\u00c2\u00a0 Liriano’s injury highlights the advances that have been made.\u00c2\u00a0 Thirty years ago, his career would have been finished before it had barely begun.\u00c2\u00a0 Although he will not pitch in 2007, Liriano at least has a fair chance to come back and (hopefully) be a dominant starter for many years to come.<\/p>\n
Benson’s injury may not have any bearing on who wins what this year (a harsher critic than me may say it will help the Orioles “win” the AL East wooden spoon), but that’s not the point.\u00c2\u00a0 At the very least, the potential surgery will mean a year of his career has been taken away from him.<\/p>\n
Several newspapers today carried photos of Michael Owen running on the Newcastle training pitch.\u00c2\u00a0 It was good to see him well on the road to recovery as both Newcastle and England have missed him badly, but we shouldn’t forget that however much we miss the players from a fans’ perspective, it must be ten-times worse for the player himself.<\/p>\n
Here’s hoping Kris makes a good recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s all too easy to get swept along by the joy of Spring Training beginning again for another year, but spare a thought for players such as Kris Benson.\u00c2\u00a0 As you would have probably read, Benson has suffered a partially torn rotator cuff and his 2007 season is currently in the balance.\u00c2\u00a0 The Orioles are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4258,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/4258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}