Hey, remember Nomar Garciaparra? About six foot tall, 190 pounds, batting average somewhere north of .300. Well, it turns out he still plays baseball for the Dodgers. Surprising stuff you find out when you read the newspapers, especially the circumstances surrounding his mention—like why he hasn’t played a full season of baseball in over five years. It turns out Nomar has a genetic disposition that prevents him from healing properly until his scar tissue becomes near fossilized, something he didn’t know about until a recent exam. Yeah, apparently the Cubs and Dodgers medical staffs didn’t do the routine “brittle gene” testing before signing off on his physical. Tsk tsk.

“It would have been nice if I had found out a lot sooner that I had this,” said Garciaparra, who likened the problem to trying to pull a rope through a hole when the rope has several knots in it. “That’s why I keep straining different muscles.”

Garciaparra has been on the disabled list five times in his three seasons with the Dodgers with injuries to two different muscles and two different joints. He said the only way to break up the scar tissue is through painful daily treatments he is receiving involving extreme stretching and bending.

“They give me a towel so I can bite on it,” he said.

We think that’s what the Dodgers front office does every time they cut him a check, too.

Dodgers’ Garciaparra has slow healing in genes [Daily News]
Image [insidesocal.com/Miramax]