http://www.allosource.org/news-and-media/in-the-news/1
Robin Ventura was back on the diamond a season after his injury, but there would be a long slide into daily pain that followed him into retirement -- until the transplant
Anyone who followed baseball, particularly White Sox baseball, in the late 1990s remembers Robin Ventura's ankle injury.
It occurred in a spring training game in 1997, when the Sox star's spikes caught in the dirt as he tried to slide home. He suffered a gruesome injury -- a broken leg and compound fracture of his right ankle -- that required four hours of emergency surgery.
Although he made a remarkable comeback and played in the major leagues another six-plus seasons, the ankle continued to bother him. Things just got worse after he retired in 2004. But a relatively rare operation, in which bone and tissue from a tissue donor are used to replace damaged cartilage, has him pretty much back to normal.
"I was having a hard time walking, doing anything, really," he said recently from his home in California. "It hurt all the time. It kind of limited what I did. I didn't want to go anywhere or do a whole lot. I found ways to not do things."
So...Robin Ventura had muscle atrophy and daily pain to finish out his career (from a different article), a degenerative joint condition and the choice between fusing his ankle or replacing the joint with a biological transplant 8-9 years after the injury. Just so he could walk or stand without blinding pain. It's amazing that his performance actually looked something like a normal age arc.
You can talk about what a standard age decline looks like, but the real concern is that Rendon's not gonna be real effective playing 3B as a 28 year old with a peg leg if he followed a similar injury pattern. I love the kid but his full recovery from this injury is not guaranteed.
Which means his status as the #1 pick isn't either. The Pirates could call it "medical reservations" and go in a different direction very easily, especially if he struggles at all or looks like he's having trouble fielding his position due to the leg issue. We've got a long way to go before draft day.
~G