2012 has brought hope for the
Cincinnati Reds.
With an offseason full of trades
and free agent acquisitions, the oldest professional baseball team in America
has stacked its bullpen and strengthened weak spots in its defense. All is
looking bright for the club that made the 2010 postseason and is a favorite to
play deep into October this year. An exceptional pick-up for the Redlegs is
right-handed closer Ryan Madson, the ex-Philadelphia Philly who last season
posted a 2.37 ERA.
An
$8.5 million, one-year contract brought the assurance that Cincinnati needs in
the final innings of what they hope will be a successful year.
That assurance fell, along with
many hopes for the Reds, on March 20. The hurler found himself not in Goodyear,
Ariz., at the team’s spring training facilities, but rather back in Cincinnati
consulting with doctors from Beacon Orthopedics. Dr. Tim Kremchek, the team’s
medical director, delivered the news that Madson’s elbow ligament had torn off
the bone, and would require season-ending (if you can call it that, since it
never really began) Tommy John surgery.
But
that, I’m afraid, is sports.
Athletes
every year are signed to multi-million dollar contracts, with teams throwing
essentially all they have into what are truly fragile beings. Every dollar
spent is a gamble, a chance and a prayer that each tendon, muscle, bone, and
brain of every player in the organization will hold together just long enough to
win and make back all the money that was spent on the payroll.
The
Reds, on this particular occasion, took a gamble on a sure thing, and that
gamble proved to be a tear in an elbow and $8.5 million down the toilet. Not to
discredit Madson in anyway, as injuries are a part of sports, but the point
here is that every buck that passes hands in professional athletics is one that
may or may not bear results. Freak accidents happen, a single hit, pull, or
tear can cause the hopes of a year to go down with a painful wince. Athletics
is not a business for the certain, but for the hopeful.
An
example closer to home is Peyton Manning. In July 2011, only a few months after
undergoing neck surgery to alleviate pain and arm weakness he had dealt with in
the previous few seasons, Manning inked a $90 million, five-year contract
extension with the Indianapolis Colts.
As
we all know, this “sure-thing” signing of the game’s greatest quarterback
proved to be a gamble too great for the organization, as they could not face
the consequences of losing.
The
idea of investing so much in human capital is unlike any other business. Athletics are a field where everything
rides on some of the most complicated machines on the planet, ones that can
take years to fix or be permanently damaged. What’s more dangerous about these
arrangements is the fact that this human capital is not sitting safely behind a
desk. No, the employees are paid to put themselves in danger, to push the
limits of physical comfort and safety, to quite literally work until they can’t
work any more.
Maybe
that is why people are so drawn to sports, why athletes crave the thrill of the
game. The simple truth is, it could end at any second. If one thing malfunctions
in the human machine, all could be lost. Everything that is worked for, all the
time that is invested, it can all disappear, just like that. A tweak, a twist,
a break, a tear, and its finished.
Ryan
Madson and the Cincinnati Reds lost this bet with the human body. For the Reds,
luckily there are a few weeks to scramble the rotation in an effort to save the
season before it even begins. For many, like the Colts, these chances are not
as fixable.
But
that is sports, just a hope, a prayer, and gamble in the riskiest capital of
all: human beings.
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