Swing And A Miss / A Column About Nothing

So Shank goes back to Ft. Myers for more spring training stories and asks the hard-hitting questions:

What’s with all the odd baseball ailments springing up?

FORT MYERS, Fla. — I couldn’t wait to get back to Florida, back to baseball. I had to find out what was going on with all the small, strange injuries plaguing the men who play this glorious game.

Reading the paper back in Boston last week, I was stunned to learn that David Ortiz could not play spring training games because of “dehydration.’’ I wanted to rush down here with a case of Poland Spring for Big Papi, but then Sox manager John Farrell said there were a couple of other things going on with the star DH.

It turned out that Papi had the flu. He had “general soreness.’’ He has played in only six of 16 spring games and might be back by Thursday. Ortiz looked game-ready during batting practice before the Sox played the Cardinals at JetBlue Park Monday.

So, the premise of the column is that 'all the odd baseball ailments' this spring are some sort of aberration. After talking to athletes from baseball and other sports, Shank reaches this conclusion:

Dehydration. Dead arm. Obliques. These are things that are going to happen.

That’s baseball.

Never mind!

UPDATE, 3/25/15 at 6:41 PM - Title corrected to fix the typo.