Requiem for Buster Posey

It had been a rough season for young Gerald Posey.

The reigning National League Rookie of the Year and World Series Champion had been getting dinged up for two months straight. Foul balls finding the small gaps in his catcher's gear. Bats hitting him in the hands and wrists on opponents' backswings. Sometimes taking two or three foul tips in one game right off his facemask. Giants brass and coaching staff said they were worried, and for good reason.

The postseason hero who energized and led a team to the most unlikely and overdue world championship in recent memory was starting his first full season in the majors as the most vital component of an iffy ball club. The Giants, who knocked the cover off the ball throughout Spring Training, have been utterly bereft offensively since the season began. Their first place standing in the National League West in late May is a tribute to sheer luck and little else. The team is last in runs scored in the NL, last in home runs, last in everything and -- get this -- they have a negative run differential.

Posey was the glue that held this team together. He managed the Giants well-stocked pitching staff with ability that belied his years of expertise. Posey, as it is widely reported, was a lifelong shortstop before moving behind the plate in college. As the Giants front office has wrung their hands about the abuse Posey has taken behind the plate this season, there has been a smattering of Giants fans asking, "Well, why don't we move him back to the left side of the infield? There's a hole or two over there, you know." The response, when these obvious lunatics have been humored, is that Posey is a catcher or a fill-in first baseman. Catching, we're told, is Posey's "calling." And I get that, I really do.

But I sat in the living room on Wednesday night, watching the Giants game on my computer as it went to extra innings. As Scott Cousins barreled toward Posey, I held my breath. The throw from Schierholtz in right field was a good one. It always is. It was going to be an extremely close play. An instant later, Posey's helmet flies off as he's sent sprawling. He flops to his stomach, clutching at the dirt in agony, writhing around and pounding at the ground in despair, and frustration, and hopelessness. I find myself audibly saying, "Oh no!"

I'm reminded of my grandmother, crying out from the dark of my father's bedroom, where she's laying in bed and listening to the Giants game on the radio. My grandmother -- who taught me what baseball was and who the Giants were and how to love both of them -- was no stranger to yelling at the radio during baseball games, but this was altogether different. It was a wail of despair, and I'm pretty sure the first intelligible words out of her mouth were, "Oh no!" My sister and I ran in to see what was the matter. The Giants were in Montreal, and Dave Dravecky had just tumbled off the mound after throwing a pitch, his cancer-weakened arm shattered. How could this be? We'd just been there at Candlestick, live and in person, for his comeback win against the Reds. It was only five days ago! He was right there! But then...he was gone.

Buster Posey is not Dave Dravecky. Nor is he Jorge de la Rosa, the Colorado Rockies' de facto ace, who has just gone down for the season with a ligament tear in his pitching elbow. He'll need Tommy John surgery, but as far as pitching injuries go, he's likely to return to 100%. The early news with Posey is that it's a broken leg, along with torn tendons. We probably won't see him again in 2011. We may never see him catch again. Is it career-threatening? Too soon to tell.

I keep trying to thing of another time that the single most key player on a team has gone down with a season-ending injury on a potential playoff team, and I keep coming up empty. Maybe the Giants will rebound from this. Maybe Posey will come back sooner than we think. Maybe it will all be okay. But it's the uncertainty that really fills Giants fans with despair. That was the hardest part of watching Posey react to his injury last night. As someone who has gotten injured plenty and seen plenty of people I care about get severely injured, that was the one emotion I recognized most clearly: despair.

I have this awful feeling that this is what I'll be thinking about in October. Watching a young man become consumed with despair, and Giants fans being completely unable to do anything other than say, "Oh no."