Yu Darvish Speaks About his Injury and How Bad it Really Is
From www.SI.com
As some of my more loyal readers can attest, I’ve been a huge Yu Darvish fan-boy. When things looked their worst, I’ve been leading the charge in regards to how we needed to wait and give Darvish a chance to earn fan’s respect. Even when the news came out that Yu would miss the remainder of the season due to a stress reaction, it seemed to turn more fans off.
I get it in a sense. A stress reaction seems to be a made up injury, and even looking into the injury it seems like it’s something that one could fake.
Cubs fans just don’t trust him yet, and it’s because he isn’t one of ours, yet. There hasn’t been a big moment on field that Cubs fans could grasp on to. He was a high priced free agent that took the place of a fan favorite in Jake Arrieta. Arrieta has mostly performed well in Philadelphia, while Darvish hasn’t pitched in a Major League game since May. Finally, there’s been numerous diagnoses that haven’t shown much, yet Darvish wasn’t progressing as fans thought he should.
I shared this in numerous places on social media yesterday, and it really does need to be read and understood. The article from Evan at Cubs Insider really goes into the injury, the fact that this effects only 0.8% of players, how the test for it creates pain in itself, and is such a rare and freak injury no one would really think to test for it.
This adds to the toll it has taken on Darvish, both physically as he tried time-and-time again to come back, but also emotionally as all he wanted to do is go out there and contribute to his team.
Then Darvish spoke out on his own blog. It was written in Japanese, yet here is the blog but translated into English.
Yu Darvish’s blog entry from 8/22/18.
Translated to English by @mikaotx昨日のダルビッシュ選手のブログの内容を英訳をしてみました。 pic.twitter.com/teemhhFMj6
— mikaotx (@mikaotx) August 23, 2018
Knowing what we know now. Knowing that this injury is virtually undetectable through traditional tests. Knowing the pain he’s gone through. Knowing how much of the negativity had gotten back to Darvish – how can you not feel bad for him?
Before the season started, one of Darvish’s closest friends and I were talking. He mentioned numerous times that Yu was so excited to pitch in Chicago and for the Cubs. He went on to say how much they’ve spoken about pitching in the World Series for the Cubs, winning and avenging his 2017 World Series performance. How the Cubs will see the absolute best version of Yu Darvish. And Cubs fans were so quick to throw him under the bus every chance they had…
