Middlebrooks May Have Wrist Injury – Deja Vu All Over Again

Very distressing news. Will Middlebrooks, check swinging in the first inning of tonight’s game with the Baltimore Orioles, may have injured his right wrist and promptly left the game. He was  replaced by Pedro Ciriaco.  At this time, we are being told he has a sore right wrist, which, of course, is the same wrist that was fractured and ended Middlebrooks’ season last year.  Boston has little depth in that spot and should his injury and removal from tonight’s game evolve into a lengthy absence from the line up, this does not bode well this early in the season.

Aug 10, 2012; Cleveland, OH, USA; Boston Red Sox third baseman

(64) fields a ground ball in the first inning against the Cleveland Indians at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

If Middlebrooks, however, turns out to be injury prone, it harkens back to another season and a promising young player, Jed Lowrie.  He was a top rookie in 2011 but could never get off the injured list. Lowrie was ultimately traded to the Houston Astros in 2012 without living up to his potential. The highlight of his stay with the Red Sox was his alleged affair with the then on-field reporter Heidi Watney, now with the MLB network.

The loss of Middlebrooks would really deflate our early season hopes as he is supposed to nail down the troubled hot corner position, created by the departure last year of Kevin Youkilis whose dedication to the gamer was publicly challenged by the intemperate mouth of Bobby Valentine, the erstwhile and ersatz manager of the Sox. Youkilis, as we know, went to the Chicago White Sox and now resides just down I-95 with the New York Yankees (Youkilis is currently out with a strained oblique).

The ancient Greeks felt that a mortal angering the gods caused turmoil like a stone thrown in a pond.  So long as there were ripples in that pond caused by the mortal’s sin, the mortal’s universe was out of harmony with itself.  It seems the Red Sox’s historic and infamous collapse at the end of the 2011 season angered the baseball deities with such an intensity that  it  reverberates today. Let’s pay homage to those deities, so that our pond will be again be calm.

On the positive side of things, Ciriaco, now playing shortstop, is playing well, and Don and Jerry, our TV guys are in fine fettle.  As I have been writing this post, the word out there is no debilitating injury to Middlebrooks’ wrist, so we’re getting some much needed good news.

Supporting the Middlebrooks TV news were two recent tweets. At 10 pm ESPN’s Gordon Edes tweeted, “Middlebrooks:”No pain No X rays Just a scare” while the Boston Globe’s Peter Abraham tweeted, “More @Middlebrooks: “I probably could have stayed in the game and done fine. I have all my strength, we did strength tests.”

That’s good news indeed.