Varitek May be Done
As in done for good.
Oh sure, he’ll have surgery, and rehab his knee, and come back and catch some games. But I suspect this is the beginning of the end, as much as I hate to say so.
Cartiledge surgery has come a long way, and most people recover pretty well from it, at least in the short run.
But cartiledge can’t heal itself or regenerate, so all you can do in those surgeries is staple the cartiledge back together or remove the torn part. Having the injury at all increases your chance of having another tear and having a surgery done increases your chances even further. To say nothing of the increased chances if you are a baseball player, let alone a catcher.
Let’s face it. Jason Varitek is 35 years old next April, and as a catcher it’s an old 35. He’s caught exactly 1000 games in the big leagues. That is a lot of wear and tear. This knee situation has been bothering him all year and had already sapped his power and his playing time even before the actual tear. It’s not going to get better, even after surgery.
And seeing as how 4-6 weeks is the minimum just to resume “active behavior” for this kind of surgery, it’s hard to see how Varitek could return to the grind of full-time catching in time to make any sort of impact before the end of the season. And for a player whose entire skill set depends on his knees, this injury is huge. Even if he comes back, his career is probably going down a steep hill from here.
August 2nd, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Say it ain’t so, Nick! I think these are all viciuos lies.
Yes, this is very serious and depressing. Yes, the Sox might not even make the postseason now, without ‘Tek. But even though he’s 34, last year was by far Jason Varitek’s best year in the bigs. He hit .291, made the All-Star team, and won both the Silver Slugger and the Gold Glove. I find it hard to believe it could all come crashing down so fast.
I *am* worried that this is the first year Jason seems to have shown any nagging injuries—we’d all heard about the glute strain, but even though the knee sitch was all hush-hush until he came hobbling back to the dugout on Monday, it *must* have been bothering him before because these things don’t generally happen overnight.
However, while it’s possible that his body is just completely falling apart after he’s been a total horse for years on end, I am not ready to throw in the towel on him just yet. (He’s hardly delicate flower Nomar Garciaparra.) I think he has more games left in those huge, muscly thighs of his.
For the sake of my Sox, I hope he does.
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August 2nd, 2006 at 4:17 pm
I was watching NESN yesterday, and all his teammates were saying he has been battling a sore knee all year long.
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August 2nd, 2006 at 4:30 pm
You have to wonder what the WBC had to do with this. Of course it’s not solely to blame, but you’re talking about a suddenly increaded April-present workload at the age of 34. So many of the WBC guys just aren’t the same.
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