Dan Shaughnessy has a nice column today on Lester's plight and adds a personal element from his own family. This is powerful stuff. My thoughts and prayers, and I'm sure those of everyone affiliated with dcat, are with Lester and his family.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Bad News Brings Perspective
The Red Sox are suffering through a miserable stretch at least in part because their clubhouse looks like a MASH unit. I can safely say that I have never seen a team get hit by injuries like the Sox this season, particularly since the All Star break. That said, sometimes life intervenes in sports and brings perspective. The Sox have announced that one of the key figures in what we hope will be a flourishing youth movement, 23-year-old pitcher Jon Lester, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The doctors caught it early and are optimistic about his prognosis, but cancer is cancer, and one can imagine that baseball now takes a back seat to getting healthy.
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2 comments:
Thank god gambling has come to the dcat blog!!
Good Lib --
I'm not certain I buy this: "Let's hope revisionism doesn't put our poor season down to injuries- they were as much a symptom as the cause of our plight."
Obviously no one will have a lot of sympathy for the Red Sox. But we lost our starting catcher, starting right fielder, more than half of the rotation, our starting shortstop, and several relievers at or before the point of our collapse. Over the course of the season we lost our left, center, and right fielders, our dh, every guy in our opening day starting rotation, Lester, Pappy, and others. To say that without those imjuries we would not have had a greater lead on August 1st or that we would not have won a few more games in August baffles the imagination.
To be sure, ever team has to deal with injuries. But that does not change the fact that we have been bitten by more than any professional team I have ever seen.
Which free agents would you target? There are not too many out there, and you can rest assured that any who are will get some interest from the Bronx. I'd push for Zito, I'd stockpile starters, and I would not pull an Arroyo-esque trade even if we go into the season with 8 starters. How many years will it take going into the season with a perceived surplus and ending the season short before we realize that there is no such thing as too much starting pitching?
dcat
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