Johan Santana is scheduled to see a doctor, in the wake of being scratched from his latest start, and is expected to need surgery on his left elbow. The fear, of course, has to be that he might need Tommy John surgery, that would cost him the 2010 season, along with the rest of 2009.
This is on the heels of the Mets' Jeff Franceour tearing a ligament in his left thumb.
This, of course, is part of the wussification of baseball that Maury Allen laments in his latest column, in which he says the Mets' "new history of chokiness and wimpiness" is going to keep them from winning. And to illustrate this "wimpiness," Allen talks about David Wright taking time off after getting a concussion, saying that Wright "took a pitch on the cocoanut and is now resting comfortably on the Mets disabled list. "
Because everyone knows that how comfortable you are when suffering from post-concussion syndrome.
So, yeah, if Santana were a real man, he'd pitch through the pain, the way real men like Sandy Koufax (threw his last pitch at age 30) and Don Drysdale (retired two months after his 33rd birthday) did.
And if Wright were a real man, clearly, he'd go out there and suck it up and not let a little issue like a concussion keep him on the sidelines.