Muscle-bound

White Sox infielder Brett Lawrie was channeling his inner jibber the other day when he told the Sun-Times he’s working to get rid of the “little kinks” that have been bothering him as he tries to come back from a left leg injury dating back to last July.

“It’s not necessarily sore,” Lawrie reported, “it’s nothing that’s grabbing me or anything like that.  It’s just how everything is sitting and needs to be aligned, that’s all.”  You have to wonder which Lawrie family member dropped little Brett on his head.

After the Sox acquired Lawrie from the A’s, Clare showed me a video clip of him doing his best Fred Astaire imitation, defying gravity long enough to run on walls, if not quite the ceiling.  My immediate reaction was, “That’s nice, but what does it have to do with baseball?”  Pound for pound, Lawrie looks to be as strong as anyone on the Sox, and maybe that’s the problem.

Back in the Dark Ages, players shied away from touching weights for fear of becoming “muscle-bound”; I remember this label being applied to Bill “Moose” Skowron in particular.  Back in the 1950s and ’60s, the ideal was flexibility.  Then came PEDs in the 1990s, along with the explanation that the player in question “had hit the gym hard in the offseason.”  Steroids went away, but the fascination with muscle building continues.

There has to be a happy medium between a happy-go-lucky chunk like John Kruk and today’s muscle-fixated players.  You do have wonder if there comes a point when muscles aren’t flexible enough to handle the sudden movement required for fielding a bad-hop groundball or hitting the deck in order to avoid a 100-mph fastball head high and inside.  How best to stay in shape?  Ben Franklin said something about moderation, and I would agree.  Back off the weights, stay limber and avoid the DL.

That's someplace Brett Lawrie has landed seven times in his six major-league seasons.