Sitting at the Dock of the Bay

We all have bad days, weeks, months, years. What happens when we suffer from one? We hit the bar, we sneak out of work early, we take a nap, we play with our cats, we get a manicure. And, most of the time, no one gives us a hard time about it.

Unless you’re an athlete. Because if you are an athlete, sports fans – fickle ones, at that – make it their own pastime to comment about your bad day, remind you about your bad day, and hold it over your head for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes on end.

Heaven forbid said bad day occurs due to an injury. Then you’re “injury prone,” “weak,” “not a professional,” “disingenuous.” Injury equals weakness, and unless the limb is severed, many believe you ought to be out on the field, ice, court, or pitch.

Jason Bay is having a bad week. Maybe a bad month. (Photo: Flickr user lifes ill)

One could say that Boston Red Sox’s outfielder Jason Bay is having a bad week. Maybe a month. After he pulled a hamstring this past weekend, he had to sit out two games. Nevermind that Bay was the last Sox player to take a day off since the All-Star Game. Nevermind that the last day he had off was when he was hit by a pitch around Memorial Day. Bay suffered from a bum hamstring, and Sox fans took to the Boston.com comments labeling the guy as a “bust,” as “lazy,” as being not worth the money he allegedly is asking in a new contract.

Bay came back for Wednesday evening’s game against Tampa Bay (the 2009 home of everyone’s favorite Californian Jewish Outfielder, and your June interleague play run leader, Gabe Kapler), and tweaked the hamstring again. Hamstrings are a fickle part of your body. Any athlete will tell you that. You can aggravate it running sideways, in the beginning of a vertical jump, on the landing of a leap – all routine parts of an outfielder’s game. It shouldn’t be a great surprise that maybe Bay shouldn’t have played Wednesday. He most likely felt fine on Tuesday, and then in the routine movements of playing his position on Wednesday, felt the injury again. That happens. Heck, as a teenager, my permanently wrecked knees felt great when I wasn’t throwing roundoffs or doing my ballet bar exercises. And then I would do such things, and holy heck, I thought someone was splitting my knee open like one would take a cleaver to an avocado pit and eating the bone alive. But you wouldn’t know if you would feel the pain until you tried physical activity.

No tears were shed for former fan favorite Bay in the comments section of Boston.com. One of the first commenters to the report about his hamstring re-aggravation claimed that, “Star players step up,” and accused Bay of being lazy, and that he ought to get out there and play like a professional. Others followed the negative suit, saying that he isn’t worth the money he might get in a new contract, that he’s been nothing but a disappointment, and that he ought to be replaced by farm system players. One commenter even went as far to describe Bay as “injury prone” throughout his career – Bay, of course, being the guy who played all 162 games in 2005, 159 in 2006, 145 in 2007, and 155 in 2008. If that’s injury prone, I would hate to see that commenter describe JD Drew or Carl Pavano.

Bay had been out 2 games as of Thursday morning. He had been out maybe 4 games all season.

I know most newspaper commenters exaggerate in their comments. That the majority of commenters don’t think before they type. But listen to sports radio. Read blogs. The commenters are just joining in the negative fray of those contributors. How disingenuous is a fan that their first thought upon the injury of a player on their team is that the player is lazy or undeserving of a chance to heal? Bay isn’t the first one to be held to the impossible standard possessed by sports fans, and he won’t be the last. Athletes may be paid for their physical ability, but they shouldn’t be put down and used for glue the minute they suffer a muscle pull. Sports fans ought to lose the barbarian-ness and reestablish their humanism.

Because, after all, I don’t see strangers publicly criticizing stenographers suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome who need to take a day off, or a lunch lady for missing work because she’s sick from caught-from-first-graders flu.