Hints That Gibson May Be Out Until 1990 Don’t Surprise Team

The strong hints that Kirk Gibson might be out until next year have not taken the weary Dodgers by surprise.

“You just throw up your hands,” third baseman Jeff Hamilton said Wednesday. “Things like this have been happening to us all year. We’ve learned, you’ve got to play no matter what happens.”

Said Dodger Manager Tom Lasorda: “The thing that matters is him getting well. At this point, that’s all we care about.”

The question is, when will Gibson get well? He went on the 15-day disabled list July 23 with a sprained right knee and chronic left hamstring strain, but late Tuesday night hinted that he may be out for longer.

‘I’ve tried rehabilitating and then playing twice, and it hasn’t worked either time,” said Gibson, who rejoined the club Tuesday after doctors in Michigan confirmed what he had learned from the Dodgers--the area around both knees is inflamed, and the only cure is rehabilitation and rest. Thus far, that has been no cure.

“So I rehabilitate it and then go back and run on it and it gets worse again--what happens then?” Gibson said. “I can’t keep doing that.”

An option, Gibson said, would be exploratory surgery, in which case his season would be finished.

“I’m going to run on it, and give it one last shot, and then decide,” Gibson said. “If exploratory surgery is an alternative for me, I don’t want to wait until I have to be rehabilitating next spring. I tried that this year and couldn’t catch up.”

When asked if he thought he would return this year, Gibson said: “I can’t read a crystal ball, I don’t know. If I strengthen myself to where I can run and run well, yes. But I have no way of knowing.”

Neither would Lasorda predict if Gibson would return this year. “If I could tell you that, I would be an outstanding surgeon at the Mayo Clinic,” he said.