Saturday, August 07, 2010

Silva Situation is Scary

The poor Cubs just can't seem to have any good news this season. After dealing with on-field problems and off-field problems, the Cubs have now lost Carlos Silva. But this isn't just a case of an injury. This isn't another head case. This is a heart case. And ball players aren't supposed to have heart cases.

It seems like a long time ago when the Cubs swapped their problem child, Milton Bradley, to the Mariners for Silva. Both had big contracts. Both had worn out their welcome with their former teams. The trade figured to be a waste of time for the Cubs. Silva has been awful for a long time. But the trade ended up being a triumph as Silva kept winning. He and Tyler Colvin and a somewhat resurrected Alfonso Soriano were the few good stories of the season.

And then Silva started slipping. The drop in performance was sudden and then he went from pitching to the hospital to the Mayo Clinic and thus far, his heart has not been able to maintain a rhythm. Like the Fan said, it's difficult to imagine a ball player, the epitome of youth and physical ability, having a heart problem. There are the few odd cases in our lifetime of players who had an undetected time bomb in their chests and died suddenly. But it still happens so irregularly that it is jarring. Thank goodness, Silva's problem was caught before something really bad happened.

From what the Fan has been reading, Silva will need to undergo a medical procedure to get his heart going again. One option is somewhat unobtrusive going with a tube from his man parts to his heart. The other option is open-heart surgery. But neither are a given. We are talking about the heart here.

Carlos Silva has given us some smiles this season with his improbable run of success. Now all we can hope for is a return to health. If we get a return of the ball player, that will be icing on top of the cake in this situation. We just want Silva to be well.

No comments: