What Was Ailing Aramis?

That Charlie Horse is a beast to get to.

In the latest (and as I recall only) episode of Aramis Ramirez' True Confessions, the secret of the abominable first half that plagued the Cubs' 3rd baseman and emasculated the Chicago offense came to light . . . kind of. Aramis Ramirez was hurt, but he's not going into details.

I'm not going to say specifically what it was, but I wasn't healthy. . . . Not only the thumb, just injuries in general. I wasn't healthy, put it that way. It's tough enough to play when you're healthy.

I'm not denying Ramirez was hurt, but I'm deeply troubled by his simultaneous transparency and secrecy. If he had never said anything about it, I wouldn't care, but since Aramis brought it up, I need specifics. And since he's not going to say what was holding him back, I have no choice but to come up with my own diagnosis. Here are ten possibilities for what may have been holding Aramis back.

10. Ramirez is a nanosophobe, and his fear of dwarves crippled him until Ryan Theriot and Mike Fontenot were traded. Ramirez' OPS before the Theriot trade: .700. Since: .830. Actually, that one's so believable, I'm tempted to just stop right here. But I must press on.

9. He sneezed while stepping out of a hot tub after a long night of browsing the Internet. None of that actually hurt him, but after thinking about how his former teammates had been shelved by such mishaps, his sense of mortality overwhelmed him. Then he got better.

8. Jock itch.

Stephen Strasburg is not Mark Prior

Prior illustrates the infamous "Prostrate Sigma" pitching motion.

If you care, you probably already know. The MRI of Stephen Strasburg's divine cannon of retributive wrath arm indicates he will probably need life-threatening career-ending your basic, run-of-the-mill Tommy John surgery, a procedure rendered so simple by modern medicine you can get it done in the food court at Walmart. I can't count the number of times in the last hour I've heard him compared to Mark Prior. Seriously, it would be like keeping up the count of hamburgers McDonald's has served in history. Suffice it to say, the comparison has now been made billions and billions of times.

I even made the comparison. Shame on me. The guys are similar in that they are both stud pitchers who were selected in the first two picks of the draft by teams that really, really, really (x billions and billions) needed them to do well. They both allegedly pitch with the "M" arm motion (aka the inverted W, the prostrate Σ, the sleeping 3, and the drunken zig-zag). They both have struck fear in the hearts of opponents with their dominant pitching and triggered mass bouts of hysteria among their respective fans due to long bouts of not pitching. And both were antagonized by their teams' ex-pitcher color analysts for not being tough enough to pitch through pain.

But the nature of Strasburg's early flirtation with the TJ surgical scalpel is nothing like Mark Prior's early career. Nothing. We have all, it seems, played revisionist historians with Mark Prior's days as a Cub. Please allow me to clear the record and scoff at the myriad fools who claim to have predicted Mark Prior's physical woes.

Alfonso's Oil

In Paul Sullivan's latest bout of actual news, he writes that Alfonso Soriano's knee might be in for some serious treatment. Or it might not. The Cubs are considering subjecting the most tragically expensive knee in the Chicagoverse to arthroscopic surgery that would sideline him for *gasp* two weeks.

Or they won't. For now, Soriano's just getting the continued therapy and workout sessions that have worked such wonderful magic thus far.

Not that it matters. The playoff picture doesn't have the Cubs in it right now. I believe in divine intervention, so I'm not ruling out anything. But surgery seems like the best option . . . for Soriano or just about anybody who thinks extra stretching and ice baths are gonna fix this multi-million-dollar problem.

Cubs' Injured as Numerous as All Stars in the Sky

With injuries sidelining Ted Lilly and Alfonso Soriano for at least a few days, the Cubs are close to fielding a team of All Stars who have missed time this year due to injury. Check out this list of Cubs All-Stars (mostly of past years, obviously) who have been bitten by the ravenous injury bug at some point this year:

Milton Bradley

Ryan Dempster

Derrek Lee

Ted Lilly

Carlos Marmol

Aramis Ramirez

Alfonso Soriano

Geovany Soto

Carlos Zambrano

Am I missing anyone? Again, this isn't the list of Cubs who have been injured. This is the list of Cubs All Stars who have been injured. Cub All Stars have been injured nine times. Nine times! Granted, when they've been healthy, they haven't played like All Stars this year, but the Cubs can ill-afford to lose anymore players of this calibre for any length of time.

Hopefully Ted Theodore Lilly (esquire) can plow through this injury like so many Molina brothers. But for now, the Cubs really should be thanking their unlucky All Stars they're still in this pennant race.

Man, He's Got Tight Quads

Milton Bradley left today's game with a tight quad after legging out a walk in his first at bat. I'm really not that alarmed, especially since it would give Micah Hoffpauir a place to play for awhile if Bradley did miss his customary 50 games.

Further allaying my anxiety is the fact that Bradley's contract is heavily laden with incentives for actually, you know, playing. I'm as excited as the next guy (overheard from Next Guy: "I'm actually kinda bored over here.") . . . Correction, I'm even more excited than the next guy that the Cubs are playing baseball again, but Spring Training games don't mean jack. The team results don't mean anything, and the individual stats don't mean anything. I still remember when Nomar set the Cactus League on fire, prompting Peter Gammons to predict an MVP year for the Cub shortstop. I think he wound up with a negative batting average in April. 

So, yeah. Not scared. Not scared. But still . . . um, let's not lose anybody else during the intense base-on-balls drills, mkay?