Long before he was an ESPN analyst and soap-opera sleuth, Mark Schlereth was a modern medical miracle. Somehow, some way, he managed to squeeze in 12 NFL seasons among 29 surgeries, 15 on his left knee.
And how many of those 29 injuries did he hide from his team?
“Hide? No, I don’t want to say I hid them,” Schlereth said. “But I’d ignore them at times, or not necessarily report how sore or how bad something was. It’s part of the deal.”
Part of being a pro athlete, that is, where injuries fall into a gray area of playing through pain, or stubbornly playing with pain when rest would be better.
“Knowing how to deal with soreness is part of our industry,” said Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd, whose team reports to spring training this week. “When you play 162 games, plus spring training, you’re going to get sore. A player has to arrive at that, has to figure out what he can play through. Because he ultimately knows his body better than anybody else.”
Last year O’Dowd watched as pitchers Jeff Francis and Franklin Morales and first baseman Todd Helton battled through pain. Helton eventually had surgery on his back, Francis was shut down late in the season and may soon need surgery, and Morales was bounced back to the minor leagues, the team unaware of his back injury at the time.
Playing through injuries can be more a matter of conforming to a culture than following orders. It’s the culture of the clubhouse. It even has catchphrases: “Gutting it out.” “Being a bulldog.” “Taking one for the team.”
Francis, for instance, tried to pitch through left-shoulder tendinitis that continues to give him problems, not wanting to let his teammates down. He pitched, ghastly ERA and all, until the team’s medical staff finally stopped him.
“There definitely is something to that,” Francis said. “As long as you’re contributing to the team, you want to be out there for your teammates. If you’re hurt and not playing well, not really helping the team, there’s a fine line there.”
Francis’ willingness to pitch through discomfort is typical. Take Avs defenseman John-Michael Liles, for instance. He’s 28, in the prime of his career, but he wakes up sore every day.
“Everything hurts,” Liles said. “You get out of bed and you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, I didn’t feel that yesterday after the game, but I feel it now.’ It isn’t until you get those three weeks off after the season that you start feeling better.”
History dictates
Soreness is one thing. Playing through pain is another, and history provides many examples. Sandy Koufax grimacing from the raging tendinitis in his elbow that ended his career. Curt Schilling’s bloody sock. Willis Reed sticking two jumpers to start Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Lakers, hobbling around with a torn knee ligament.
If superstars play through such injuries, rank-and-file players endure at least as much. And if it’s pennant stretch or playoff time, the pain tolerance gets amped up even higher.
“They ought to do a story on how many cortisone shots the players took prior to the Super Bowl,” said former Nuggets player and coach Bill Hanzlik, who battled back problems late in his career. “The over/under is probably 25 a team.”
Pittsburgh quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, for example, said this week he played the Super Bowl with two broken ribs.
Players generally try to play through injuries and ask questions later, as Roethlisberger did. It’s how they’re wired, especially in the NHL, where the culture of playing through injuries, many of which never go public, was established in the league’s earliest years. Case in point: The Avs’ Ian Laperriere and Scott Hannan each endured a broken foot to stay on the ice in last year’s playoffs. Nothing unusual there. Laperriere played a season-and-a-half on a torn left knee ligament during his days with the Kings.
“I missed eight days, then braced it up and came back,” Laperriere said matter of factly. “If you can’t play through injuries, you won’t play long in this league. They’ll figure you out pretty quick.”
Therein lies the rub. Talent can get you to the big leagues, but toughness will keep you there.
Avs coach Tony Granato’s career had barely started when he was faced with the prospect of playing through a major injury. He suffered a severe concussion as a rookie, but played on. Such is often the case with young players who don’t have the security of a long-term contract. Another example is Morales, who didn’t tell the Rockies’ front office about a back injury that affected his mechanics and sent him back to Triple-A.
“I realize there were times in my career when I played and shouldn’t have,” Granato said. “It was a major thing, but I thought: ‘It’s no big deal. It’s a headache, so what?’ I was a young player and things were going well, so I wanted to be out there. From a smart standpoint, an intelligent standpoint, don’t ask that to be part of our makeup. It’s who we are. I would say the real term is warriors.”
Someone else will play
Full disclosure is an oxymoron when it comes to injuries in pro sports, especially in the NHL and NFL. And yes, Major League Baseball goes there, too. Take the curious case of the Phillies’ Chase Utley, who denied last season that he had a major hip injury, only to undergo surgery after the World Series.
It can get downright farcical, the effort teams go to to hide or downplay injuries. Patriots coach Bill Belichick is famous for his disdain of injury reports, so much so that the Pats listed Tom Brady as questionable every week for four consecutive seasons. Before a Pats-Colts game in 2006, the teams engaged in dueling gamesmanship, listing a total of 39 players on their injury reports.
Former Broncos quarterback John Elway once suffered a cracked rib, but the Broncos didn’t put it on the injury list. The NHL, meanwhile, makes things as vague as possible, hauling out terms such as “upper-body injury” and “lower-body injury” to protect its players.
When injuries hit, agendas soon follow. Sometimes it’s the team’s, and sometimes it’s the player’s. And don’t overlook the obvious: Money is a factor. A player with a long-term, guaranteed contract may react differently to an injury than will an unproven rookie. And if a player is in his free-agent year, don’t be surprised if he’s “good to go” no matter what.
“If a guy has a multiyear contract, he figures to be much more forthcoming with an injury than a guy heading into his last year of arbitration,” O’Dowd said. “Pitchers may have a calf injury that really affects their deliveries, but they’re not going to say anything if they’re entering free agency. Believe me, that drives me crazy, but it’s the reality of the business.”
The bottom line? It’s all good if you’ve got Yankees money or are in the first year of a guaranteed six-year deal. But if you haven’t made much money or don’t have much guaranteed in the future, you had better find a way to play.
“You know one thing about the NFL,” Schlereth said. “If you can’t line up, they’ll find somebody who can.”
Jim Armstrong: 303-954-1269 or jmarmstrong@denverpost.com
