Now I Know How Erik Bedard Feels

For a solid two years now I've been having some pain in my shoulder, ranging at times from a mild twinge to full-on doubled over agony. It generally doesn't bother me in my day-to-day life, but I always feel it when I throw. Not only the pain, but also the unsmooth, ratchet-y feeling of my arm (like those old Transformers toys) when I go through the motion. Anyway, you have some days that it feels fine and other days where it feels like your arm is going to fall off. But you can still technically throw, more or less.

So I visited the orthopedic surgeon today, and he suspects a labrum tear, "baseball's most fearsome injury" (they are notoriously hard to diagnose; they didn't find Bedard's until they opened his shoulder up). It's three weeks of physical therapy for me, and if it doesn't improve it looks like I'm going under the knife. I'd almost opt for the surgery immediately because my body's so bad at fixing itself nowadays. When I was a kid I'd eat whatever I want and then go out and dislocate all my limbs and rip ligaments crashing into trees, and everything healed up just fine. Now at the ripe old age of 28, everything's turned chronic. Chronic shoulder pain, chronic knee pain, chronic elbow pain, it's such a sad state of affairs.

Anyway, I went almost all in on Bedard this year, and the constant will-he-play-or-won't-he-play got tiresome. I feel bad that I got so angry, because we're pretty much brothers now! I hope to see Bedard flash his 95 MPH heater in the future--it gives me some hope that I will regain my blazing 70 MPH fastball.

Seriously though, the one thing that was really encouraging is how supportive the doctors are about fixing these problems. I guess you could live with the injury for the rest of your life if you kind of take it easy from now on, so I was half-expecting the doctor to tell me how stupid I was even thinking about surgery so I could go back to playing co-ed softball. And I guess I could always play 1st base. But I dunno, it would still feel like I lost something.