Extended Update On Alan Horne’s Injury

ALAN HORNE

“During the first inning, my hamstring started to tighten up a little bit.  As the game wore on, the tighter it got.  Whenever it was they came out there, they kind of wanted to take me out then, but I felt like I was making some pretty good pitches and I had a lot of life on my ball.  I was kind of excited and wanted to stay out there.  But it just continued to tighten up.  I threw a couple balls that were up to that last hitter and really tried to get through the next one, and just had kind of a twinge in my hamstring.  It’s one that I’ve blown out before, four years ago, and it’s just something you don’t play with.  It’s not torn again, it’s not pulled or anything like that, it was just one of those things where it’s time to stop messing with it.  The biggest thing they’re worried about is not wanting to get my mechanics altered coming off the shoulder surgery.  Hamstring’s kind of the least of the concerns at this point.  But I don’t want to develop any bad habits or put some extra stress on that shoulder.  I’m still only eight months out of surgery, and there’s no point in getting out there and creating bad habits and maybe doing something stupid like overthrow a ball with bad mechanics and have to start all over again.”

“I think I’ll be fine.  (Making my next start) is up to them.  Like I said, the biggest thing is my shoulder.  I’ll come to the field tomorrow and see how it feels and we’ll go from there.  I would think, maybe worst case scenario, I’ll miss a start.  I’m hoping to be ready to go Sunday, maybe just take it a little bit lighter this week and start doing some preventive stretching and some maintenance stuff.  It’s something that I’ve worked on part of the past four years, since I hurt it.  It’s just a part of it when you have a hamstring injury, it’s one of those things.  You’re going to deal with it the rest of your life, not just your career.  It’s one of those nagging things.  We’ll see how it feels tomorrow, but hopefully I’ll be good to go Sunday.  But that’s obviously not my call.”

“(Injuries are) something I’ve struggled on and off with my whole career.  It’s definitely the biggest slap against me.  It’s not a fun thing to go out and be hurt.  As far as the label goes, that’s something that I’m not concerned with.  Everybody has injuries and this and that.  Somebody’s going to label you with something, whether it be good or bad or probably both at some point in time in your career.  It’s part of the game.  It may be something that winds up being a blessing, you never know.  Maybe a little down time, if they decide to shut me down a little bit, may help the shoulder rehab, not that there’s a problem now.  But you just never know, but hopefully I’ll be good to go here in five days.”

“No, I don’t want to be shut down.  I want to make every start.  I feel like there’s some progress every time.  I know all the lines aren’t pretty right now, but I’m starting to do some things that are part of what you’ve got to do to get back on track.  The one home run ball in the second, was really the only well struck ball of the game.  It’s what I was trying to do.  I fell behind the guy, 2-1, and just tried to slot a sinker low in the zone and did that.  He got out there and hit it.  That was the result, but solo home runs don’t beat you a whole lot.  That was something I really wasn’t worried about.  A lot of the other hits, (were) not well hit balls.  I guess that’s how things work when you’re trying to come back off an injury and trying to push off of these struggles, it’s not going to go always your way.  It’s part of the game.  It’s not an easy game, and anybody that thinks so should come try it out some time.  If it was all easy, every single one of us would be in the big leagues right now.  I think that’s part of it.”

TONY FRANKLIN

“He had a little tightness in his hamstring.  We just felt that it was best for him to come out of the game.  I don’t know the cause of it, but it was a problem for him.  The first time we went out, we thought it was serious enough to get him out, but he said he was fine, so we left him in the game.  But obviously, as he went on, it got a little worse, so we got him out of there.”

Mike Ashmore, mashmore98 AT gmail.com