Are you or someone you love suffering from an avulsion?

This is no laughing matter, folks. Avulsions are very serious problems. In fact, millions of Americans will suffer from an avulsion this year. One of those millions of people needs your help. His name is Josh Beckett, and he has an avulsion on his pitching hand. It's so serious, in fact, that he's headed to the Disabled List.

An avulsion, by the way, is a blister.

I don't call this guy Blisterin' Beckett because he's fast. Without fail, he develops a blister on his pitching hand, every single year. I'm not one to rip on guys for getting hurt, (despite what you may think after our previous post,) but this is simply one of the most preventable injuries in sports. That's not to say that if you do everything right, you will never get one - it just means that if they keep cropping up, there are certain things you can do in the future that may keep them from coming back. For example, Moises Alou pisses on his hands. This is one way to toughen your skin and prevent blister formation. I know that's gross and all, but if you make $6.66 million a year to throw a baseball - as Joshua is - you might just want to man up, and whip it out. Now, at this point you may be saying to yourself, "but I thought he had a finger injury - I saw no mention of a blister," or, "I saw on Sportsline that he has a torn flap of skin! That sounds pretty serious." Yeah, it is serious. But the word avulsion is kind of like the word puma. An avulsion is a blister, is a torn flap of a skin, is an avulsion. A puma is a lynx, is a mountain lion, is a puma. It's all about fear. If someone tells you, "hey hand me that shotgun, here comes a mountain lion," you might move a little faster than if you think you're about to get attacked by a tennis shoe. Just like you might have a little more sympathy for Josh if you think he's suffering from a torn flap of skin, or an avulsion. Those sound pretty serious, after all. A blister, on the other hand - that's something you get from working out in the yard.

As usual, I'm going to make the assumption that baseball players aren't idiots, and they don't want to go to the DL. So why, Josh, do you keep getting sidelined by these blisters? Pee on your hands. Clap them together after you throw, (this causes the blood to rush to your hands, decreasing the likelihood that you'll develop a blister.) You might even have to change the way you release the ball. But figure it out, because it's just a blister.

For the record, I'm not making fun of blisters. They hurt like heII. I went a little crazy at the cages last week and developed six deep blisties on both hands. They hurt for five days and then they go away. But no one is paying me millions of dollars a year to not get blisters. Heck, I don't even play for a real team anymore. And better yet, now that my hands have calloused up, I don't need to worry. Of course, if I really didn't want a blister, I wouldn't have taken 150 swings - again, simple preventive measures.

Anyway, I've seen parts of a bunch of good games lately. I just haven't had the time to write about it, but stick around guys. We're not going anywhere. As for the comments - thanks to BigFoote in the chat box for the compliment. RumorMill - I agree. The Blue Jays could have made some bigger improvements, but as I said originally, all they needed was a healthy team, and that should have been enough, since they did fairly well for themselves last year. Saif, I'm not sure how confident I am that the Jays can salvage anything from this year. It depends on when they get their guys back and if they're still in contention on July 31st.