An Oblique Epidemic
When Jeff Kent went on the DL today with an “oblique strain,” he became the third Dodgers player to do so, following Nomar Garciaparra and Brett Tomko. Which got me thinking, is it just me or are more and more players getting this mysterious injury?
I’ve been watching baseball for many, many years, and I can never remember so many players getting this injury in the same year. Oh sure, once in a while a player would get a strained oblique, but it seemed pretty rare. But this year, I can think of a number of star players just of the top of my head who have spent significant time on the DL with a strained oblique, including Albert Pujols, Mark Prior, Milton Bradley, Johnny Damon, Casey Blake, Lew Ford, Mike Cameron, and noah Lowry in addition to Garciaparra, Tomko, and Kent.
The weird thing is, none of these players seem to know how they got the injury. They all say they don’t know when or why it happened. Which brings me back to my question – is this injury becoming more common, and if so, why?
July 26th, 2006 at 1:10 am
[...] Five days after I wrote this post pointing out the epidemic of oblique injuries this year in baseball, Bill Plaschke wrote the exact same thing in the Los Angeles Times, only he padded it out to the length of a full article with his usual dross and attempts to make ”jokes.” [...]
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