Another Big Year Awaiting Angels Vernon Wells?

After adding 22 RBI and more than doubling his home run total to 31 last season compared to the previous, is another big year in store for star outfielder Vernon Wells now that he will be playing for the Angels in hit happy Southern California?

"...You forget about everything that happened last year because it doesn't really affect this year," Wells told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in this morning's editions. "It's a whole new challenge."

After hitting .565 in his last year at nearby Bowie High School in Arlington before being taken as the No. 5 overall pick in the 1993 draft, Wells has had an often disappointing, up-and-down career especially considering his signing of a $126 million contract with the Blue Jays five years ago, compensation which he admits he has never earned.

The fact that the Blue Jays traded him to the Angels for part-time, third-string catcher Mike Napoli (since traded to the Rangers) and aging outfielder Juan Rivera may say something about Toronto's lack of faith that Wells will be able to stay healthy long enough to continue performing until his contract runs out in 2014.

But the good-natured Wells, 32 -- who once laid down a bunt in the home run hitting contest at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown -- seems unaffected, concentrating on home life, community and life off the field while he can.

"In the off-season, you try to take as much time as you can to separate yourself from the game," Wells said. "The biggest sacrifice you make during the season is being away from your family. So you've got to soak it all up while you're here."

Wells and his wife Charlene operate the Vernon Wells Perfect 10 Foundation, providing aid and assistance to single mothers and disadvantaged children. Sunday he will address the Texas Brahmas hockey team for the school's Faith and Family Day.

"It's an honor to be asked to do things like this," Wells said.

No Lingering Effects for Blue Jays Vernon Wells

That Blue Jays outfielder Vernon Wells so suddenly returned from a so-called "broken wrist" should come as no surprise to readers of MLB News Online, which reported exclusively on May 13 that Wells' injury report was bogus.

If Wells actually had a "broken wrist" as the team claimed, his arm would still be in a cast today and most of the remainder of his season would be in doubt, as the rehabilitative regimen resulting from extensive immobilization would have been significant.

That means now that little residual effect should linger from the injury -- a mere sprain -- and Wells can be expected to recover his normal capabilities immediately without significant risk of relapse.

The Blue Jays original bogus report was carried by mainstream media after Wells was said to be disabled for a minimum of six to eight weeks as the result of hurting himself while diving to catch a fly ball.

The initial radiograph failed to show a fracture, yet someone on the staff ordered a superfluous magnetic resonance imaging test that turned up a false positive.

As has been repeatedly opined in this venue before, the "gold-standard" textbook definition of a fracture is one found in a good old-fashioned X-ray, not a CAT scan or MRI.

In only the most unusual of circumstances will a CT scan or MRI be called for to look for a clinically important (read: important) fracture. The wrist is not one of them. Every physician knows that if every musculoskeletal extremity injury with a negative X-ray were run through the CT or MRI, numerous fractures would be "discovered."

Vernon Wells Has a Broken Wrist? Guess Again

Blue Jays outfielder Vernon Wells has been put on the disabled list for six to eight weeks after diving to catch a fly ball last week and supposedly "fracturing his wrist." Poppycock!

Since decorum prevents more appropriate exclamations too foul for this august company, poppycock will have to suffice since, evidently, initial X-rays were negative but the Blue Jays medical staff inexplicably ran the offending wrist (with Wells attached) through the MRI scanner and viola: a fracture.

"I knew it," spouts some trainer, becoming an instant hero for being smarter than every physician and textbook of medicine, finding Wells' injury and protecting the owners' investment and Wells' career while the Blue Jays season goes in the tank.

As has been repeatedly opined in this venue, the "gold-standard" textbook definition of a fracture is one found on plain radiograph, not a CAT scan or magnetic resonance image.

In only the most unusual of circumstances will a CT scan or MRI be indicated to look for a clinically important (read: important) fracture, and the wrist, friends, is not one of them.

Every physician knows that if every musculoskeletal extremity injury with a negative X-ray were run through the CT or MRI, numerous fractures would be "discovered." Pay attention now: Any fracture illuminated by the latter method has no more clinical utility nor significant clinical outcome than if the bony abnormality wasn't discovered at all. That's why the CT and MRI is not the right test for a fracture.

Hence, whatever the extent of Wells' injury (which is much more likely to be soft tissue in nature, not bony) will take a few days of rest and rehab, and he will be asymptomatic in seven to 10 days.

Doubtless, Wells will soon begin to wonder why, with no symptoms and full range of motion of the joint, he is not back in the batting cage, itching for his next opportunity against the AL East hurlers.

"Well, Vernon, you have a broken wrist, remember? You can't play until....hummmm...August?"

Even though he will soon be well on the way to recovery, Wells' wrist will no doubt be placed into a long arm cylinder cast for a month, and then a short arm cast for another month, and it's that medicalization of this ridiculous diagnosis that will do the most damage, resulting in stiff joints of the hand, wrist and elbow and atrophied musculature, necessitating several weeks of rehab to get him in shape just in time to hold his beer can in September while watching the Yankees fight it out with the Red Sox for top berth in the division.

Sorry, Vernon, you might have made the All-Star Game this year, but your so-called medical experts are gonna block that one. Oh, and by the way, here's the bill.