Lee and Prior down, USA out…
It was a busy day in the baseball world. Cubs fans learned the fate of Mark Prior (sort of) and the United States learned the fate of its team in the World Baseball Classic.
In the WBC, team USA looked sluggish, and tired. In the end, Roger Clemens probably felt like he was pitching for the Astros again. Clemens pitched a pretty good game only giving up a couple of runs, and of course received NO support from his under-achieving offense. While stars like Lee and Damon had to sit out due to injury, the US lineup was still stuffed full with All-Stars that could only come up with one run. To be honest, if that is how you play with your tournament life on the line, you don’t deserve to move on to the next round. And today, team USA didn’t.
Roger, I hope this wasn’t your last game, you deserve better a better end to a Hall of Fame career than the one you were given tonight. You truly did conquer the game.
The other big news in baseball today had to do with the health of Cubs pitcher Mark Prior. Now, as I posted earlier in the week, Prior had been experiencing arm pain and was shut down pending tests. Well, the tests came back and it appears Prior is suffering from a shoulder strain. As is my usual style, I’ll give you the official line, and then I’ll of course let you know what I think.
Company line (Cubs Trainer Mark O’Neal is playing the mouthpiece in this case): “I’m very pleased. There’s bad news, extremely bad news, that could come out of it. Right now, if this is a posterior shoulder strain, we’re going to deal with it like you would a hamstring strain. Unfortunately, it’s in the shoulder. So yes, for us, it’s pretty good news.”
My take: WHAT!?! Did I miss something here? Ok, let me start off by pointing out that this is not exactly the tune they were singing earlier in the week. Cubs GM, Hendry earlier this week said this, “Hopefully, it’s just a little snag and he’s back with a few days setback.” Now correct me if I’m wrong but the news today sounds a bit worse than Hendry’s version doesn’t it? Hendry had him back working in a couple of days and now we hear Prior might not be ready at the start of the season? Sorry, that doesn’t seem like good news for the Cubs.
Secondly, did anyone else notice the tense that O’Neal used? Bad news COULD come out of this. IF its a shoulder strain…. It seems to me that they really don’t have a clue what is going on with this young man’s arm. Would I be shocked if they turned around tomorrow and said it is actually something else? Not at all…. and I bet the Cubs would be pretty pleased about whatever new ailment Prior had too.
“Well, it looks like Mark has an incurable variation of the West Nile Anthrax Death Virus but really we’re really quite pleased about this. This could have been really bad news so if in fact he does have this incredibly rare disease in his lungs we’re going to treat it just as if it were in his arm, but unfortunately for us its not… so he’s probably toast. But all in all, we couldn’t be happier.”
I know I’ve heard that type of double speak before… when was that? Hmm…
oh, and of course…
Come on people! I guarantee you this story doesn’t end here.