After last night's victory, Ortiz elaborated on the condition of his knee, saying last year he had undergone an MRI that showed a small tear of the meniscus cartilage. He said last weekend in Detroit, and reiterated last night, that he sustained the injury in June of last season, when he got tangled up in the netting of the batting cage at Yankee Stadium. Ortiz said he did not have surgery last season because he did not have inflammation. "It wasn't bad, you know, it wasn't getting inflammation," Ortiz said.
"I have the same thing now, but it gets aggravated a little more. We may want to repair it at one point. It affects your hitting because I sit on my leg to hit and some days when I come in and it's sore I can't bend like I normally do. It makes me stand up more straight and makes me go forward too much."
Depending on the severity of the tear, it doesn't always require surgery. Former Sox outfielder Trot Nixon played all of 2005 with a meniscus tear before having surgery after the season; Jason Varitek missed over a month after having surgery last August to repair a meniscus tear in his left knee.
There was a report, although unconfirmed, that Ramírez had a small meniscus tear last season; Ramírez missed much of the last six weeks of the season with what was called patellar tendinitis.
"Even if an MRI showed a tear, unless it clearly and significantly keeps a player from performing, there's no reason to do anything with it," orthopedic surgeon Jeffery Dugas said at the time Ramírez was hurt. "If he can play his position, hit, run on it, he can continue to play. An MRI is such a sensitive test, sometimes you can overread it."
So why did Ortiz, whose three hits last night raised his average to .319, keep quiet about it until recently?
"I just don't want people to go crazy about it or anything, you know what I mean? The doctors know what I have."
