ATLANTA — They have become movie fights disguised as baseball games. Watch the Rockies closely, and you can almost hear the crashing furniture and broken staircases. They are bare-knuckle brawling to keep their season relevant, while succumbing to injuries in the process.
One day after Carlos Gonzalez bruised his right wrist slamming into a wall, all-star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki left Monday night’s game with a tight right quadriceps after batting in the fourth inning. He will not play tonight and could miss the remainder of the series.
“If I have to miss a game or two or three or four, that’s better than two months,” Tulowitzki said. “I will have a better idea (today).”
Tulowitzki began favoring the leg about halfway up the first-base line as he grounded into a double play. He shook his leg and did several mini-squats, trying to alleviate the pain. Tulowitzki turned his ankle over the weekend and thinks it might have led to this strain, which is nothing like the quad injury that sidelined him for 46 games in 2008. No MRI is planned.
“Correct. It’s not (serious). Tulo just has to have decent strength and not be sore,” head athletic trainer Keith Dugger said.
Tulowitzki has missed just one game this season. This is the first time the quad has bothered him this year. He changed his diet and workouts after the 2008 season and has not experienced any significant issues with the leg since.
Garner’s great adventure. Outfielder Cole Garner was going to enjoy the greatest day of his baseball career, as long as he could stay awake.
Garner received his first big-league call-up Monday, joining the Rockies at the expense of reliever Clayton Mortensen, who will resume starting in Triple-A. The promotion was the easy part. Joining the team in Atlanta, well, that became a series of planes, trains, automobiles and road races.
Garner and his girlfriend caught an 11:30 p.m. red-eye flight from Las Vegas, where the Sky Sox were playing, to Atlanta. He arrived at 6:40 a.m., jumped in a rental car and hit the road to nowhere. He didn’t reach his hotel room until 10:30 a.m. The Peachtree 10K Road Race was being held downtown, so Garner couldn’t get near the team’s digs. He finally parked nearly 2 miles away and joined the road race, walking alongside runners in his shorts and flip-flops.
“I got some strange looks,” said Garner, whose girlfriend reached the hotel after a race official had his son help pull their bags to the site.
