PEORIA, Ariz. – Chris Snelling doesn’t ask “Why me?” because he says the search for an answer would make him bitter.
He doesn’t wonder “What’s next?” because, well, he can’t stand to know that anymore.
All Snelling wants is a chance to play baseball with two healthy knees, two sturdy ankles, a couple of pain-free wrists and everything else that has comprised the long list of the injuries he has suffered since 2000.
“I’ll go 0-for-50 right now if somebody told me I had a healthy knee,” he said. “I’d go 0-for-400 for a whole year. Well, maybe not a whole year, but I’ll take 0-for-50.”
When healthy, 0-for-50 is impossible for Snelling, a natural-born left-handed hitter with a career .327 minor league batting average.
With Snelling, 0-for-two games hardly happens. The problem, of course, is that playing two games in a row has been rare. Snelling is as scarred as a veteran, yet he’s just 24.
“I’ve spent more time in the Peoria training room than I have on any baseball field,” he said. “I think they’ve named the training table for me.”
Asked if there’s a body part he’s never hurt, Snelling pointed to his right knee. Then he shuddered.
“Let’s don’t talk about that,” he said.
Why bother when there are so many other parts that have become part of the Snelling lore?
He played a healthy first pro season with the Everett AquaSox in 1999, but since then he has suffered hand, wrist, knee and ankle injuries. In January, he had nasal surgery to remove a septum because an examination revealed he had two.
He took some ribbing in the clubhouse for that one, teammates kidding Snelling about his “cosmetic” surgery.
“People think that I’ve got this nose job, but I haven’t,” he said. “It wasn’t pleasant at all, but I’m sleeping better now.”
The nose is fine; the left knee is getting there.
Like so many other injuries, Snelling had just gotten himself healthy last August when he took a swing in a game at Safeco Field and, of all things, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.
“I remember being in the training room getting taped and I said, ‘My knee feels great today.’ I don’t think I’d said that the whole year,” he said. “Then I did it hitting. How does that happen? I’d never heard of anybody tearing an ACL hitting.”
He had surgery in September to repair the damage and has spent almost six months recovering from an injury that typically takes seven months to heal. He hopes to be playing games by the end of spring training.
“I know this is a stupid goal, but my goal is to break spring training with any team,” Snelling said. “I don’t care what team. A team.”
Every year since 2001, the Mariners and their minor league clubs have left in April to begin their regular-season schedules, leaving Snelling behind to rehab.
“In 2002 I broke my thumb playing a spring training game, ‘03 I was rehabbing my knee, ‘04 I break my hand on the first swing of spring training after I’d swung for three months straight in the whole offseason,” he said. “The first swing of spring training I break my hand? Like, how does that happen?”
Then last year, the knee.
Snelling refuses to feel sorry for himself or ask why these things keep happening to him.
“If I did that, I’m going to be a bitter man,” he said. “I try to look at it as a challenge and tell myself that I’ve been tested again and I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. I could either quit or rehab. There’s no in-between.”
The Mariners had long dreamed that Snelling, with that quick left-handed swing, could fill a longterm void in left field. Instead, as his injuries piled up, the team moved on, as if to indicate that any contribution Snelling provides would be merely a bonus.
When the latest injury occurred, Snelling really did think, at least for a moment, about quitting.
“My first ACL rehab took 14, 15 months and it was painful,” he said. “Stuff didn’t feel right and they kept having to clean it out. This last one was like, ‘I don’t think I can do it again. I don’t want to sit out another 16 months.’ “
This was a better injury to have, at least on the scale of what Snelling has experienced over the years. The recovery time was expected to be half what he’d endured before.
“It took me nine months to run again the first time,” Snelling said. “This one it took me three.”
As badly as he wants to play again, Snelling knows he can’t progress any faster than his body will allow. He’s currently working out two days, taking a day off, then working out two more days. Eventually it’ll be three on and one off until he can work out daily without swelling or soreness.
“I almost feel lazy,” he said. “If I say, ‘I’m going to take the day off,’ to me that’s being lazy. But I think I have to do that a little more.”
When he does come back, Snelling said he’s concerned only with his legs, not his swing.
“Hitters, especially big-league hitters – and I’m not saying that I’m a big-league hitter – they don’t have to tell themselves that,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever worried that, ‘Oh my God, is my swing gone? Can I still play baseball?’ My worries are, ‘Am I going to be able to run?’ “
Snelling reports to work every day like all the other Mariners. He has a locker in the major league clubhouse, plays cards with his buddies and, when he practices, he’s on the field with the other outfielders.
Make no mistake. He feels more like a patient than a player.
“I think what’s frustrating the most is not being a part of anything,” he said. “I’m pretty much the only guy who’s a long-term rehabber this spring training. You’re pretty much forgotten when you’re on the training table, and I understand that.
“I’m not happy about it, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”
He still has his humor, although it’s not as prevalent around reporters who’ve found joy over the years listening to him talk about childhood mishaps, his “Mum” in Australia and his bulldog Barnold, who once ate a Costco-sized container of Jolly Rancher candy.
Snelling has added a new bulldog puppy, Betsy, who is joining the 4-year-old Barnold in showing him just how lazy an animal can be.
“They’re awesome dogs, but they just sleep,” he said. “Barnold, he just doesn’t move.”
The dogs are great company, especially after what Snelling has gone through in baseball.
“One of the things I’ve always been able to do every day in the four years I’ve been down here rehabbing, or however long it’s been, as soon as I leave the training room, I don’t think about my knee,” he said. “I keep myself occupied. I play with the dogs. I haven’t done much, other than stay at my house and come to the field.”
Snelling swears he’s as happy now as he was when the Mariners signed him as an unblemished kid who played his first pro season in Everett.
“I would say my life couldn’t be better,” he said. “But if I did, something bad would happen.”
He said it with a smile.
That part of Chris Snelling hasn’t been broken.
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