You think A-Rod has it tough?

Those of you who have been following my athletic endeavors have no doubt been concerned about my recovery from those two red road rashes on my knees. To disbelief and sometimes outright laughter I've been telling people that they are rug burns. But I digress. You'll be relieved to learn that they have nearly stopped bleeding and are healing nicely; nicely enough that on Tuesday I was out on the ball diamond again with the team.

Hopes were high as the mighty Val Vista Villagers were mightily stoked to take on the Apache Wells Warriors. The day previously, we even took practice at our batting-cage facility! We each had about three sets of 20 swings at the pitching machine's offerings. If I do say so myself, my last set would have yielded about 10-15 hits.... not too bad for a guy who didn't really make the big impression he hoped the last time out.

I took my usual yoga stretching exercises, then catching warm-ups followed by fielding practice. At my first opportunity to chase down a fly ball, something rather weird happened - I couldn't run! What the heck?? I tried again, but one would never confuse me with the guy whose nickname used to be the "gazelle"!

Seems I must have overdone my warm-ups a tad and pulled a groin muscle.

Rather sheepishly, I quietly advised my manager Dale that I'd not be a position to help the team much today. His response seemed to be a mixture of disbelief and outright laughter (Dale is 75 and his brother, the pitcher, is 80).

Let me tell you, when I looked at the inside of my thigh the next day and saw the angry purple color from my knee all the way up to my ...... groin, my response was also disbelief, but certainly not laughter!

After a couple of days of very slowly hobbling around, my thoughts were that perhaps I should take a month's leave from the rigours of slow-pitch and take up something less strenuous, like kick-boxing or running marathons. I mean, I'm not 25 any more. If I were, say, like Allan, I would fully expect to recover by lunchtime. But I'm not. I might not fully recover until March!