This has been the Year of the Band-Aid in New York sports, the year of the gauze pad, the year of the ice pack, the Year of the X-ray and the MRI and the PRP injection. Maybe other years have been as bad as this one, but it’s hard to remember those years being quite as bad as this year.
If the past 12 months were portrayed by an actor, it would be Nick Nolte at the start of “North Dallas Forty” — waking up in his bed with blood from his nose spilling onto his pillow, grabbing his shoulder, grabbing his wrist, reaching for both a bottle of painkillers and a warm Lone Star beer before settling into a scalding-hot tub with a lung dart for both a soak and a smoke.
It feels like we’ve all been hanging out together on an extended injured reserve list, and every time we can feel our ankle get better then our hammy starts to bark, and every time the pain in our neck begins to ease we crash-land in the concussion protocol. It never ends. It never stops. And it’s everywhere.
This little carousel of cruelty began in earnest last March 16 when Mets closer Edwin Diaz earned a save in the World Baseball Classic, began to celebrate with his Team Puerto Rico teammates and wound up with a blown-out knee that would sideline him for the duration of the season. He’d be joined by a bunch of banged-up mates: Justin Verlander for the first month of the season, Starling Marte for most of the last three, Pete Alonso for a key stretch right in the middle.
And that was just the beginning.
The Yankees were cruising right along until June, when two hard-to-duplicate freak injuries turned the whole season around. First, Aaron Judge collided with an outfield gate at Dodger Stadium, and he disappeared for most of June and July. Then Anthony Rizzo missed the last two months thanks to post-concussion trauma, an injury that actually originated in late May when Fernando Tatis Jr. collided with him on a pickoff play.
You lose your best right-handed hitter, that’s bad. You lose your best left-handed hitter, that’s bad. You lose them both? That a recipe for exactly what befell the Yankees.
Ah, but there was more.
There were both New York quarterbacks ending up with dramatic and season-ending injuries. There was Aaron Rodgers, after a summer filled with expansive hype and hope, going down on the very first series of the season with a bum Achilles, and there was Daniel Jones — the ink on a $160 million contract barely dry — running for his life on almost every dropback until he finally blew out his knee in Week 9.
The Islanders lost their best player, Mathew Barzal, for a chunk of last season, and the Devils lost Jack Hughes for 16 crucial games this year. The Rangers just lost Blake Wheeler for the rest of the season. Ben Simmons, a one-man triage unit, has played just 15 games for the Nets this year with a buffet table of issues.
Then, of course, there are the Knicks. There’s no telling how the series last spring with the Heat might have gone if Julius Randle hadn’t been hobbled with an ankle injury so bad that it required offseason surgery, and they were also affected by lesser injuries to Immanuel Quickley and Quentin Grimes, both of whom have since been traded.
But that was mere prelude to this season, when the Knicks lost Mitchell Robinson in December, Randle and OG Anunoby in late January, and saw a season that seemed destined to last until at least late May sidetracked to such an extent that it’ll be considered a win if they can avoid free-falling into the play-in tournament.
It’s been quite a run.
Or, more accurately, quite a limp.
Injuries are the rule in sports. Everyone knows that. Everyone acknowledges that. Every team endures them. Every season is a test of how you muddle through them. Still …
Still. It feels like we’ve spent the whole year in the tub. And as Bill Parcells once put it so eloquently: “It’s hard to make the club from the tub.”
Hard to make it to a championship, too.
Vac’s Whacks
Maybe it’s me, but St. John’s players have looked pretty darned laterally quick the past few games.
Great to see the Globetrotters return to the Garden for the first time since 2018, and last week drew their largest crowd, more than 12,000, in many years. Former Nickelodeon head Keith Dawkins is leading the brand rebuild for a squad that has a record seven women, including former LSU captain Alexis Morris, as well as former St. John’s center Joey De La Rosa. The Globies turn 100 in 2026.
Shouldn’t the rule about court-storming be the simplest one: The field or court is for the players, and the stands are for the fans. The players have no business ever going into the stands, and the fans have no business ever setting foot on the field or court. Period.
I’m pretty sure Juan Soto might go entire weeks of this season when he doesn’t swing at a single pitch out of the strike zone. He’s like the Anti-Yogi.
Whack Back at Vac
Robert Lee: It appears George Costanza was put in charge of MLB’s new uniforms.
Vac: Maybe whoever approved that should’ve gone with Costanza’s signature move and done exactly the opposite.
Charles Costello: Maybe February is the worst month in sports. Personally, I dread the week in July, save for the All-Star Game, when there is no baseball. But take your least favorite month and imagine it 10 times worse, it’s still a whole lot better than waking up four years ago to the Post’s “No More Sports in Town” back page.
Vac: Amen, Charles.
@Mc21Sean: It’s a tired, old game what the NY press does to sports teams/figures in this town. Good for Coach Pitino and the players for shoving it back in your faces.
@MikeVacc: It’s a far more tired game that Pitino plays, blaming everyone in the room except himself when things go poorly. Good for the players for rising above it.
John Cobert: News item: Player names on jerseys using smaller lettering this year. “It’s a huge weight off my shoulders,” said Cardinals pitcher Adam Kloffenstein.
Vac: Imagine how relieved Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miles Mastrobuoni of the Cubs must feel.
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