Healthy Cuts: Slugger Jay Gibbons Looks Forward to an Injury-Free '03

The evening of the day Jay Gibbons' girlfriend flew in to visit him at his home in Long Beach, California, last fall, he took her to the movies. They saw what he calls “a girl movie,” Sweet Home Alabama, an endearing romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon.

It's a film full of funny moments, and Gibbons' girlfriend was perplexed as to why he never laughed while they were in the theater.

In fact, although there is nothing horrific or frightening at all in the film, Gibbons got more and more scared as the film reeled on.

The reason had nothing to do with what was on the screen, but everything to do with Gibbons' right wrist-the same wrist that had undergoone surgery twice over the past 15 months. Less than three weeks earlier, Gibbons had had a suture removed from the wrist at Union Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. The suture, which had been placed in the wrist during the initial surgery (to mend a broken hamate bone), was supposed to have dissolved. It didn't, though, and pressed against a nerve in the wrist, making it difficult for him to hit during most of the 2002 season. When the doctors at Union Memorial removed the suture two days after the season ended, Gibbons thought that his wrist problems finally were behind him. In the movie theater, however, he realized they weren't.

“I just was in a lot of pain,” he recalls. “So when we got out of the movie, I told my girlfriend, 'Look, something's wrong.' We went to the hospital, and it's a good thing I did. They said it was a pretty serious infection. Nobody knows why it got infected or what happened. I spent three nights in the hospital. They were able to get rid of the infection in a few days. All they told me was, 'It's lucky you got in this quick,' because my wrist literally blew up within an hour. After the infection was cured, I flew back to Baltimore and had surgery again.”

Gibbons' hand and wrist problems have impaired both of the left-handed slugger's first two seasons in the major leagues. His first surgery came on August 8, 2001, just four days after he broke the hamate bone swinging at a pitch in Toronto. The frustrating thing for him was that Gibbons was just coming into his own at the time. He had been a Rule 5 draftee, meaning the Orioles had to keep him on the major league roster all season or offer him back to Toronto, the team from which the Orioles had drafted him. He was then 24, and manager Mike Hargrove used Gibbons sparingly at the beginning of the season. In June and July, though, Gibbons began playing more regularly, and he hit 13 of his season total of 15 home runs in those two months. Then, he broke the hamate bone and essentially missed the final two months of the season. Still, his 15 home runs were the most of any AL rookie at the time of his injury (the Yankees' Alfonso Soriano later would pass him, with 18), and were the highest of any player picked in the minor league draft in 31 years.

That accomplishment, plus the knowledge that he could hit major league pitching for power after three years of doing so in Toronto's minor league system, made him look forward to the 2002 season with great anticipation. Little did he know, however, that the sutures from the first surgery would end up interfering with his ability to hit.

“Maybe around May,” he relates, “I started feeling a little pain. When your wrist starts bothering you, you've got to make adjustments, because that's a big part of your swing. I'd feel it here and there with my swing, and I'd have to mix it up every day. I did whatever felt comfortable enough to go out there and perform. Some days my wrist just wouldn't get loose, and I'd just have to go out there and wing it. And other days, it would feel okay. But definitely, through the last two months, my swing evolved into something that wasn't very pretty. I was just trying to get by. And I'd come into games thinking, 'Okay, let me take four good swings and put the ball in play four times.' That was tough in some aspects, but I battled through it, and it turned out to be alright.”

One reason that it was tough toward the end of the season was that a tendon in the wrist started flaring up as a result of his tweaking his swing to accommodate the pain caused by the lingering sutures. “I was just overworking my forearm,” he says.

The pain didn't emerge as much when he made contact with the ball as when he didn't. “Maybe on the high pitch, trying to go the other way I would feel it, I'd definitely feel pain,” he explains. “But when I hit the ball, that was the easy part. It was the checked swings and the swings and misses that definitely caused me a lot of pain.”

What is truly remarkable was that Gibbons was able to finish the season without going on the disabled list, and that he somehow hammered out 28 home runs in fewer than 500 at-bats and led the team with a .482 slugging percentage.

“I started off so well [seven home runs through April, before the pain set in, a pace that would have given him 42 for the year],” he relates, “and I was really looking forward to having a nice season. But then I knew when my wrist started acting up, it wasn't going to be the same. But to be able to finish the season without going on the disabled list was a big plus for me. The year before when I broke my wrist I missed the last month of the season, so I didn't want to sit out again.”

So here he is at the outset of another season, again hoping that he will be healthy, that his wrist problems are genuinely behind him, that the frustration of having to undergo surgery three times to fix what started off as just a single problem has finally dissolved, just like those nettlesome sutures.

“I feel great,” he says in the midst of spring training camp in Ft. Lauderdale, with more than half the Orioles exhibition games already completed. “When I go up there swinging the bat, I'm not even thinking about it, which is the first time in a while. It'll get occasionally sore after practice, breaking up scar tissue. It's still building strength. But it's nothing serious at all. When I'm playing, it's no problem.”

This season starts off differently for Gibbons than his first two in that he not only is the team's regular right fielder, he also is seen as probably the Orioles most promising hitter - the one with the most potential to prroduce big numbers for the team. When he arrived in Ft. Lauderdale in 2001 - his first big league camp with the Orioles - Gibbons made an immediate splash, not bbecause of his bat but because of his biceps. They were huge. He's not that big, especially for a professional athlete, but his arms were mammoth. He is something of an addict to working out in the weight room. And the results were bursting out of his uniform sleeves. The Orioles suggested for the next year that he might cut down a little bit on his lifting, however. Team officials had switched him from the overcrowded first base slot to the outfield, and they thought he might have a little more speed and flexibility if he weren't quite so bulked up in the muscle department.

Gibbons hadn't stopped lifting, but he looked much less like Charles Atlas than he had his rookie season.

This past winter, he had to cut back his time in the weight room again, because of his wrist problems.

“I was forced to this offseason,” he says. “I wasn't able to work out that much. I probably would have worked out a little more if I hadn't been hurt. I had cut it down last year, and this year I'm kind of in between. I've put on about seven or eight pounds more than last year. I'm about 198 pounds now. I think it's a happy medium. I'm not too heavy. I'm light enough where I can move around in the outfield.”

And though he is not a natural outfielder, Gibbons has worked hard at the position since dispatched to right by manager Mike Hargrove. He thinks he can do a good job for the club patrolling the grass in front of the right field flag court at Camden Yards, a plot of land he hopes his own batted balls soar over with great frequency this summer.

“I like playing the outfield,” says the man who is primarily known for his quick and powerful bat. It's a lot of fun. I'm no Gary Matthews out there, I never will be. But I think I do the job, I make all the plays that need to be made. And I have a pretty accurate arm. So I think if I do that and don't make any dumb mistakes, I'm not going to hurt the team out there.”

Gibbons also is pleased that he's been given the right field job this season. He'll begin the year as the sole right fielder, without having to platoon and sit out against left-handed hurlers. He has shown considerably more power against right-handers, although he hit for a higher average against southpaws in his rookie season.

He's also happy not just to be in the lineup, but to be considered, along with Tony Batista, a key power source for the Orioles.

“It makes me feel good,” says Gibbons. “It makes me feel wanted. I know I need to produce in order to help this team win. We have a lot of guys that need to do their thing. I'm not putting a lot of pressure on myself. I'm just going to go out there and have fun and let things take care of themselves.”

And, Gibbons surely hopes, when he and his girlfriend go out to the movies after the 2003 baseball season, he'll be able to laugh at the jokes this time around.