Is it coincidence that the day after Kerry Wood experiences "tightness" in his triceps that my copy of Saving The Pitcher arrives?

While there may have been a game played last night - one in which the Cubs were thoroughly spanked - Wood's injury was the story of the contest, and unfortunately, I don't have much to add to the cacophony except to say that we should all follow the advice of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on this one. There are any number of different things that could be wrong, but in this moment of uncertainty, I choose to latch onto the semantics involved in the quotations from Wood and the Cubs.

Only two words were used to describe the injury in any of the accounts I've read: tightness and soreness. One never wants to hear anything is wrong with a pitcher like Wood, but if you have to hear something bad, those are the words you want slipping into your ear. Tenderness was not a word used, nor were there any descriptions of noises or moments where a pop was felt. There is still the possibility that something catastrophic occurred, but the descriptors in this case are more likely to indicate a relatively innocuous injury than any others they might use.

That being said, I'm so far from expert in this field, I couldn't see it with the Hubble. Keep an eye on the Cub Reporter, as Christian has emailed injury guru, Will "Don't Call Me a Guru" Carroll, about the situation, and as they are label-mates over at all-baseball.com, he's pretty likely to get a quick response. I also imagine Mr. Carroll will be mentioning something in his UTK column over at Baseball Prospectus. I'll pass on anything I find out, but my information is likely to come from those resources, so I suggest you cut out the middle man if you can and patronize them directly.

I see no point in speculating about the impact of this injury on the team until the full extent is known. Hopefully, it's nothing serious, and the team will simply have Wood drop his appeal of his suspension and skip a start as a precaution. That's likely the best case scenario, so let's start saying our prayers for it now.

PS - Blogger has added a comment feature, and I've decided to experiment with it. If anyone has a preference, let me know. Otherwise, I'll just see how it works and make a call from there.