Suddenly, Baseball Is Feeling the Side Effects

Now that steroids are old news, baseball is being plagued by a new one-word disease, a new two-syllable scandal, a new eight-letter mystery.

Your intrepid investigative reporter approached Dodgers trainer Stan Johnston on Saturday to get to the side, er, bottom of it.

“Obliques,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“Obliques,” I said. “I have two questions about those strained oblique muscles that are suddenly littering clubhouses like Bazooka wrappers.”

“OK,” he said.

“First question ... do I have one?”

“Um, yes, everybody has them.”

“Second question ... where in the heck is it?”

Johnston patiently poked his balm-scented hand into his side.

“Right here,” he said.

“That’s my ribs,” I said.

“Oblique,” he said.

“That’s my side,” I said.

“Oblique,” he said.

This was going to be tougher than I thought. But I have to figure this out. Steroids sneaked up on us; obliques cannot.

One minute, players were missing a couple of days with a strained rib cage, or a torn side muscle, or one heckuva charley horse.

Then, suddenly, seemingly beginning this summer, they were missing two weeks with a torn right oblique muscle. Or a strained left oblique muscle. Or a partial tear of a slight strain of a, well, you know.

“Obliques are the injury of the year,” said Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti. “Hey, we’re running a special on them. One a month.”

The Dodgers have two players on the disabled list with oblique injuries, Brett Tomko and Jeff Kent.

Another Dodger, Nomar Garciaparra, was disabled earlier this year with a similar injury.

That’s no small trend considering, before this season, many fans had never heard the word “oblique” used in reference to anything other than a boss’ warning or a dictator’s speech.

“Back in the old days, we had a pulled side, or sore rib muscles, we’d be out for two weeks and people would think we weren’t really injured,” said Rich Donnelly, the Dodgers’ third base coach. “But today, they call it an oblique and it sounds all different. It sounds all neat. It’s like, wow, a guy strains his oblique, he must be really hurt bad.”

Indeed, led by St. Louis’ wincing Albert Pujols, an injured oblique muscle has become the cool kids’ injury.

It is more rad than the rotator cuff, more hip than the hip flexor, and bigger than biceps tendinitis.

“One year it was shoulders, the next year it was elbows,” Dodgers Manager Grady Little said with a sigh. “This year, well, you can’t even look at a transaction wire without finding somebody with an oblique. I’ve never seen so many players get injured in one way in one stretch in my life.”

Almost makes you long for the days of plantar fasciitis, doesn’t it?

It started in the season’s first week, when Garciaparra was disabled for the Dodgers’ opener because of a lousy oblique, then Cleveland’s C.C. Sabathia and San Francisco’s Noah Lowry went on the disabled list because of dueling strained obliques suffered in their first starts.

The copycats soon followed, with Milton Bradley being obnoxiously oblique in Oakland, then Atlanta pitcher Lance Cormier riding the midnight oblique to Georgia, then the Giants’ Brian Wilson wishing they all could be oblique girls.

“We really should get Dr. Jobe to figure out another name for this, shouldn’t we?” Colletti said, referring to team physician Frank Jobe.

Then, on June 4, the game’s best player suffered a torn right oblique muscle while chasing a foul ball, and the baseball world spoke.

“If we can’t steal Albert Pujols’ swing, maybe we can steal his strain?”

The rush was on. Obliques were soon turning up in obscure minor league parks and overgrown college fields and, of course, in the home of the Chicago Cubs’ Mark Prior, who simply ran out of other things to make him sick.

During a nine-day period from July 11-20, this nation’s newspapers reported on nine players with oblique muscle injuries.

Yep, one per day, approximately equal to the recent ratio of Dodgers losses.

The players ranged from Lew Ford of the Minnesota Twins to Drew Davidson of the Class-A Fort Wayne Wizards to Matt LaPorta of the University of Florida Gators.

The list included a pitcher, a catcher, a first baseman, a second baseman, a third baseman, two starting pitchers and two outfielders.

That cover it?

“Strained oblique, that’s been the biggie,” said Cardinals reliever Jason Isringhausen.

As usual, league save leader Izzy was ahead of the curve, suffering from the injury last season.

“I threw a pitch and it felt like I got shot,” he said.

The obliques are fairly large muscles on each side of the rib cage, sprouting up into the ribs, helping you twist and turn.

When a player pitches, throws or swings too hard, the muscle can tear, resulting in what players call two or three days of awful pain.

“You can’t breathe, you can’t sneeze, you can’t laugh, everything hurts,” Garciaparra said. “And there’s nothing they can do. They can’t tell you to not breathe, right? You just have to let it heal.”

So why so many now?

Surely, some players with sore sides have found new excuses. And certainly, some trainers hearing of odd symptoms have found an easy diagnosis.

But one guess is that this new trend may be linked to the old trend.

With players no longer allowed to use steroids, they are spending even more time in the gym, building up their main core muscles while ignoring the side muscles like the oblique.

When the giant muscles are used in the twisting motion of pitching or hitting, sometimes the oblique muscles can’t keep up.

“You use a lot of torque out there, twisting your body to get every bit of strength out of it,” Isringhausen said. “Something has to give.”

I know the feeling. As I’m writing this column, I’m constantly twisting my body to see the Cardinals’ Pujols and Jim Edmonds and Chris Duncan go deep at Dodger Stadium.

I feel a twinge. I used to think it was just a stomachache from too many Dodger Dogs. But now I know. It’s a strained writer’s oblique. I love this game.

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Muscle breach

Oblique muscles, located near the rib cage, have been feeling the strain this season. It is, in fact, baseball’s trendiest injury:

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