I’ve heard of a lot of ways that athletes injure themselves and try to prevent injuries, but Chicago Cubs pitcher Carlos Zambrano has found a new way.
E-mailing.
According to the Associated Press, the right hander has been instructed to cut back his computer time, because the club believes the four hours he spends a day typing e-mails to his brother could be contributing to his recent elbow problems.
I wish I was making this up.
How do you spend four hours of your
day e-mailing?
Maybe he should invest in Instant Messenger or this new device called a telephone to communicate with his brother.
Maybe he is one of those finger-peck typists and has to search for each letter.
Maybe he should spend some of that professional athlete cash and get himself a high-speed Internet connection.
Maybe he can go old-school and write letters.
The thing I don’t get is, what does someone say in a four hour e-mail session? How many times can he say how his day went and how he can’t believe that his team is underachieving every year?
But really, who actually believes he is spending all this time e-mailing? This man is probably Googling himself or partaking in other wireless activities that we probably shouldn’t talk about in a column.
Well thank goodness good old Dr. Dusty Baker was there to help diagnose the situation.
“It’s not carpal tunnel, but if you don’t watch it, who knows what it can lead to,” the Cubs manager said. “We are trying to alleviate it.”
Alleviate it?
How about trying to have your pitchers throw less than 136 pitches in a game like you had Zambrano do two weeks ago against Philadelphia. (Also, Baker can’t have the Cubs’ other young ace, Mark Prior, throwing 126 pitches a couple weeks after returning from elbow problems.)
Next thing you know, the Cubs will be teaching proper typing technique to their pitchers and will need to bring in an Internet coach to help pitchers navigate the Web faster and with a decreased chance of injury.
Maybe Comcast can hook them up with DSL and rake them over the coals with high prices.
That’s the Cubs for you.
In other odd baseball news, Cincinnati Reds closer Danny Graves was let go by the team a day after making an obscene gesture at a fan after the fan yelled at him while he was in the dugout.
I would like to say that it’s good to see a team stand up for the fans, but the man has been
horrible this season. He had an ERA of 7.76 and has blown more games than the Reds could care to see.
Maybe the former All-Star knew his time was coming and just needed to vent.
Or maybe his troubles were due to excessive
e-mailing.
Typing takes first victim in world of pro baseball
Daily Emerald
May 23, 2005
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