The Slanch Report

Carlos Guillen is a personal fantasy baseball favorite of mine. The erstwhile shortstop/first baseman for the Detroit Tigers is an excellent source of high average, home runs and even some occasional steals for my various teams. The first time I ever had him on a team, it was way back in 2004, life was great and my friend,  frustrated with lack of production and a poor playing Tigers team, dropped him outright. A few days later, needing a middle infielder, I picked up Guillen. Together with my pickup of Victor Martinez off the waiver wire, I rode their collective stellar stats to a third-place finish, it was awesome.

Since then, I have had Carlos Guillen on my team every year but 2005, I like everything he brings to the table, a .300 plus average, 20 HRs and near 100 RBI and runs, he even used to be a pretty good fielding shortstop, although some injuries have hampered his range in the last year or so, hence the initial move this year to first. Unfortunately for the Tigers, they weren’t expecting Miguel Cabrera to instantly become StoneHands over at third and so they were forced to switch Guillen back across the diamond.

This year, Guillen has been OK, he started out the season super hot, even though the rest of the Tigers struggled but he has since cooled down some, particularly after the position switch. Then, last night I was perusing the game story for the Tigers game, as I am wont to do, and noticed this little throwaway line: “Leyland said Carlos Guillen has been shifted from 3B to DH because Guillen has a bad case of hemorrhoids. Guillen made two errors in the opening game of the three-game set in Anaheim. Inge started at third Tuesday. …”

I know that baseball players are used to being in the spotlight and having fans knowing lots about their lives, but I think we can all agree that we don’t need to know about this. According to Wikipedia, “Hemorrhoids are actually the anatomical term for ‘Cushions of tissue filled with blood vessels at the junction of the rectum and the anus.'” Yum! Now I know all about Carlos’ ass cushions!

You have to believe that only a manager like Jim Leyland would have said this in a press conference, he doesn’t give a fuck about anything and he probably was trying to light a fire under his players’ asses. For Leyland who is old-school, you play no matter what, and you don’t let any bullshit excuses get in the way. That’s part of the reason why he’s been so successful and why players like to play for him. Of course, it’s also probably why Leyland smokes three packs a day…

So, anyways, Guillen now joins Kaz Matsui on the anal injury list of 2008, I can only look forward to Robinson Cano’s upcoming torn rectum injury sustained while Jeter tries “everything possible to bust out of his slump.”