1. #1
    Illusion
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    Rolen to have season-ending surgery

    ST. LOUIS -- All-Star third baseman Scott Rolen will have surgery on his left shoulder and miss the rest of the season, the St. Louis Cardinals said Sunday.
    Rolen, 30, has a torn labrum and was told he will need at least six months to rehabilitate it after surgery. He is expected to return sometime during spring training. Had he waited on surgery, he could have missed considerable time in 2006.

    Cardinals team medical consultant Dr. George Paletta will perform the surgery with assistance from Cincinnati Reds medical supervisor Dr. Timothy Kremchek. A date has not been set, but the surgery is expected to take place this week.

    Rolen was in a meeting with manager Tony La Russa and neither were available for comment before the Cardinals' game against San Francisco.

    Rolen missed 67 games this season in two stints on the disabled list after a May 10 collision with Los Angeles Dodgers first baseman Hee-Seop Choi. He had surgery three days later, but the shoulder did not get better.

    Coming off four straight 100-RBI seasons, Rolen was hitting .235 with five homers and 28 RBI in 56 games.

    That was a far cry from 2004, when Rolen hit .314 with 34 homers and 124 RBI. For his career, he has hit .286 with 226 homers and 831 RBI. He has also won six Gold Gloves.

    Rolen initially was out a little more than a month after colliding with Choi while running out a grounder and returned June 18. But he struggled noticeably in 26 games, at times screaming in pain when he swung. In 87 at-bats during his return, he hit .205 with no homers and eight RBI.

    Rolen was still voted to the All-Star game but skipped it to rest his shoulder.

    Rolen came to the Cardinals from Philadelphia in a midseason trade in 2002, hitting 14 homers in 55 games in helping lead St. Louis to the playoffs. But he was forced out of Game 2 of a first-round series against Arizona when pinch-runner Alex Cintron collided with him, injuring Rolen's left shoulder.

    Rolen missed the rest of that series and the NL Championship Series against San Francisco.

    Last season, Rolen hit .310 in the NLCS and drove in the go-ahead run with a homer off Houston's Roger Clemens in Game 7. But he was 0-for-15 in the Cardinals' four-game loss to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.

    On Thursday, Rolen told the media of his choices: Wait and see if the shoulder improves enough for him to play, or have surgery and be ready to return early next season.

    The Cardinals, at 78-45 entering Sunday's game, have baseball's best record. Utility man Abraham Nunez, who has most often subbed at third base, entered the game hitting .302.

    Rolen met with Kremchek last week to get a second opinion on the injury. Rolen said Kremchek told him surgery was unavoidable, even if he sat out the rest of the season and then rehabbed for several months.

  2. #2
    EBone
    Washington State +140 over Wichita State
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    FYI. The local media here in STL are giving the Cards a really hard time about this one. It seems well deserved. The collision incident with Choi happened around early to mid May. Rolen tried to come back after he was told to rehab it and it'll be fine but the pain was too severe. This Paletta dude resigned from the Cards training staff last month and now is deemed in this article as a "consultant". Something really stinks about this. I think some very bad decisions were made early on with Rolen. Might cost the Cards a World Series chance for redemption.........

    On the surface, it would appear that Paletta resigned because he told Cards decision makers that Rolen needed surgery but Cards decision makers didn't listen. I'm sure it is tons deeper than that but it is very curious that Rolen has to go to Cincinnati for a second opinion and doesn't trust his own training staff for their opinion and now Paletta is assisting in the surgery. Curious stuff. More to come on this one I'm sure.

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