Wednesday, January 28, 2009

One Free Agent Who Won't Be Signed

I've been following Juan Encarnacion's injury situation on and off since it happened.  If  you're not familiar, at the end of August 2007, he was hit in the eye socket by a foul ball that was hit by a teammate while he was standing in the on deck circle.  It was a truly horrific injury, essentially crushing the eye socket into little pieces.  Fortunately, his eyeball did not rupture.  You can look it up on YouTube, but I didn't put a link  here because I didn't want to be sensationalistic or macabre.  Anyway, Juan's eyesight and baseball career were in immediate jeopardy, and he's had several surgeries.  I noticed him listed among unsigned free agents, so I went digging.

Per the St. Louis Post Dispatch on November 10, 2008, Juan had gone through the motions of filing for free agency as a formality, but is not expected to play again.  Juan's "vision has not returned to a point where he can drive a car.  He was, at one point, described by a doctor as legally blind in the left eye.  His vision was classified a  year ago as 20/400 in  his left eye."

The article goes on to say that he has not been in much communication with the Cards, although GM John Mozeliak talked with him.  Sounds like Juan was in a bad place a couple months ago, still has much recovery ahead, and wasn't taking visits or calls, even from teammates.

Sorry to be the bearer of such woesome tidings, but thought you might be interested in our former Tiger and one-time World Series opponent.  I won't be trite and send him get well wishes--actually maybe I will.  Sounds like he could use a corny Hallmark card right about now--to let  him know "we're thinking of  him at this difficult time."

2 comments:

Abzug Ph.D. said...

Bad luck all around.

Still, Juan ought to be real happy with the WS ring and respectable career.

Best wishes to him, I hope his recovery picks up.

breram3785 said...

I HOPE THAT YOU HAVE A CHANCE OF READING THIS SOMEDAY.....
DOYOU THINK THAT THIS WAS A WAY OF GOD SAYING WHAT A TERRIBLE PERSON YOU HAVE BEEN???? DO YOU RECALL THE SON THAT YOU HAVE LEFT IN LAKELAND, FL??? YOU HAVE DONE HIM SUPER WRONG BY DENYING HIM AFTER DNA'S AND ALL YOUR FRAUDULENT WORK. I HOPE THAT ARE SUFFERING (AS BAD AS IT SOUNDS) AS MUCH AS YOU HAVE MADE HIM SUFFER! KARMA! GOD IS GOOD! YOU CAN RUN AWAY FROM YOUR EVIL WAY HE WILL ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.