The great Elgin Baylor announced his retirement nine games into the 1971-72 NBA season. The next night the Los Angeles Lakers won the first of what would become a 33-game winning streak, still the longest in major American pro sports.
“That’s kind of how I feel,” Tim Hudson said Friday, speaking publicly for the first time since suffering a broken right ankle in New York on July 24. The Braves would lose to the Mets the next afternoon. As of Friday morning, they hadn’t lost since.
Hudson returned to Turner Field on Friday for the first time since his injury. He wore a cast, which he hoped would be replaced later in the day with a walking boot, and was on crutches. But he was in high spirits, saying of his leg: “It’s feeling pretty good. All the pain’s gone. All the swelling’s gone.”
Seeing his teammates embark on a 13-game run can poke holes in a guy’s case for being indispensable. Said Hudson: “I’d rather it be like this than the guys feeling like they need me. It’s obviously nice to feel wanted and to feel like the team needs you, but the sign of a true championship team is to overcome injuries to key players on your club.”
Also this: “The one thing I’ve been looking forward to every day is watching these guys play (via TV), watching them go out there and pitch the way they’ve been pitching and the way the lineup’s been clicking. It’s been awesome.”
And this: “I told them if they don’t win tonight, I might not come back the rest of the year.”
Hudson planned to watch Friday’s game from the clubhouse. “I don’t know if I’ll make it down to the dugout. There are some tricky stairs, and I’m not quite a professional on my crutches. I don’t want to hurt anything else.”
Unlike Louisville guard Kevin Ware, who said before the Final Four here that he didn’t ever want to see a replay of the broken leg he suffered against Duke in the NCAA tournament, Hudson got around to viewing his injury in the wee hours of that long and sleepless New York night. “It looked pretty bad,” he said, “but honestly it felt worse than it looked.”
Hudson was covering first base when the Mets’ Eric Young Jr. stepped on the back of his ankle. “I knew it was bad,” Hudson said. “He stepped on me, and I heard it and felt it. I screamed, and he screamed. … B-Mac (catcher Brian McCann) didn’t help me any, either. He looked like he had seen a ghost. He just kept telling me, ‘Be still and don’t look at it.’ I thought, ‘Geez, is the bone poking out?’”
Of Young, who was so distraught he started to cry, Hudson said: “EY was awesome. He was great. He was pretty much back there with me the whole time. … I think more than half their team came to see me after I got the X-rays.”
Of the outpouring of good wishes he has received, Hudson said: “It’s been really overwhelming. The folks at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (a favorite Hudson charity), they’ve been sending me messages and pictures. It’s very touching. I’m going to get past this; I’m going to be fine after it. There are a lot of kids in the hospital who are fighting for their lives. It just puts things in perspective. They took time out of their treatment to show me support. I’m humbled they even took the time to do it.”
Hudson is 38. His contract expires at season’s end. Given the cruel reality of professional sports, it’s possible his last pitch as a Brave — he arrived via a trade with Oakland in December 2004 — was made to Young on July 24.
“I would love to be here (next season),” Hudson said. “My main concern right now is just getting healthy. The surgery went really well. We’re going to start some light therapy stuff, and I’m just going to rehab the crap out of it. I’m going to work out and be ready hopefully to be here next year. If not, I still feel very confident that this isn’t going to hold me back from playing beyond this year.”
In the interim, Hudson has baseball to watch and teammates to cheer. “If we were losing, it would really stink. This is brutal for me, but our team has been really looking good. Not that this has been any kind of rallying thing, but guys have really stepped up … Honestly, I don’t think we’ve looked this good all year. Watching these last couple of weeks, it’s like, ‘How can we play any better?’”
And how does it feel to be walking on crutches while your colleagues lay waste to the National League East? According to Hudson, pretty darn good.“I feel like a big brother sitting back and watching their little brothers play and kick everybody’s butt,” he said. “I’m very proud of them.”
