There’s a fine line between heroic and stupid, and it’s a line the Express Minutemen have been hobbling over all season.
Andy Bonior hobbles from first to second in his first game after returning to Express.
During the team’s first 12 games, multiple Minutemen — Andy Bonior, Chris Mincher and Christopher “Chip” Porter, who has repeatedly played through muscle pulls — have risked their bodies and battled injury to try to help the team to victory in its inaugural season.
The trauma began in the first game of the year, against WUSA. In his second at-bat of the game, Bonior got up to the plate and blasted a shot into the outfield. He took off around first and decided to try to stretch a double into a triple.
“I hadn’t done any running or physical activity in several years, and my hamstring gave out and tore,” said Bonior, who sports a 1.516 OPS and leads the team with four doubles. “I felt a pop in the leg and I hobbled over to third and I said, ‘I’m done.’”
Bonior, not one to normally be sidetracked by pain, could hardly walk off the field. A week later, when it wasn’t feeling any better, he decided to go to the hospital. The news was not good: Rehab and no softball for six to eight weeks.
He was back on the field in two.
Luckily, Express (now 3-9 and two games out of first place in its division) had a bye week the second week of the year, so Bonior missed just one game. He was planning on taking more time off, but the team was short on players in week 3.
“I got caught up in the moment,” he said. “Due to a steady diet of muscle relaxers and pain killers, I was able to go out there.”
Much to the chagrin of his wife, catcher Andrea Bonior. Andrea says she trusted her husband to make the right decision, but admits she was nervous at first.
“He had to convince me it was OK,” she said. “But I knew it was what he really wanted to do.”
Express took all the proper precautions for the next few weeks — sending a pinch runner out to run for Andy after he got on base and putting him at pitcher where he could stay mostly stationary. Now, Andy has completed his rehab, no longer needs a pinch runner and says he’s at 100 percent health.
But that doesn’t mean the Minutemen are completely healthy.
Against CNN on May 19, Mincher, the team’s coach and emotional leader, was acting as Andy’s pinch runner when he slid into second base to avoid a double play.
“I thought I was Rickey Henderson in Game 7 of the World Series,” Mincher said later.
The right-center fielder, who had received limited sliding training, badly hurt his left ankle — and was subsequently called out for being tagged after coming off the bag while writhing in pain.
Chris Mincher, right, took his hand off the base to grab his ankle and was tagged out.
Unlike Bonior, Mincher didn’t know the severity of his injury immediately.
“I stood up thinking I could shake it off, but I couldn’t put weight on it,” Mincher said. “I think in my head I was optimistic it was going to be something that hurt for a couple hours — like sprains I used to get playing basketball.”
He even planned on running the Capitol Hill Classic 10k the next morning.
But when he woke up, taped his ankle and made his way down to the Metro, he realized that he could hardly walk — let alone run. He hobbled home, holding onto railings and news boxes to guide himself.
Mincher didn’t want to go to the doctor — because of his new job at the Onion, he didn’t have health insurance. Instead he stuck with the home remedy of rest, ice, compression and elevation, with varying degrees of success.
After a few days, his ankle would feel good and Mincher would try to go for a run. He’d get a few miles from home before it hurt too much to run and then he would hobble (or sometimes hop) all the way home.
That charade went on for a few weeks before he finally decided he needed to go to the doctor no matter the cost. It turned out one of his ligaments had detached from the bone and had taken a piece of bone with it. His Achilles tendon also had a partial tear. That meant immediate surgery.
“I felt like I wanted to cry,” Mincher said. “Because that could potentially mean months of not being about to go on vacations, go jogging or anything like that.”
X-rays revealed that one of Chris Mincher’s ligaments had torn away from the bone, taking a piece of bone with it.
A second opinion was a little more positive: The orthopedist told Mincher he could probably go without surgery if he stayed off the ankle and didn’t play any sports for a few weeks.
That plan lasted just a few days.
“I wasn’t planning on playing, but, when I got to the field, I was dressed up and excited,” Mincher said. “I knew I’d look like an idiot going up there, but I was also disappointed with my .273 average and couldn’t end the season with a .273 average. I wanted to prove myself to the team.”
In the fifth inning against washingtonpost.com Mincher inserted himself into the lineup as the DH. He got a single and drove in two runs, postponing the slaughter rule one more inning.
“It wasn’t pretty, but I was glad to knock in some runs against a team that didn’t think I was that valuable,” said Mincher, who received little playing time on the Bucketheads last season before Express formed its team. “I’ve made them out to be my rivals because they inspired me to make this team.”
Though his mother calls him “an idiot,” his team is behind him 100 percent. Like all the Minutemen interviewed for this article, catcher Aimee Goodwin, who has dealt with multiple injuries in the past, was supportive of Mincher’s decision to play.
“Speaking from personal experience, when a doctor tells you that you shouldn’t run on an injured foot, it’s best not to,” she said. “But sometimes it hurts more to sit out than to push through the pain and play.”
So will the injured Minutemen take the field when the team plays City Paper and the Washington Times this Saturday? Andy said he’s feeling 100 percent and is sure to be in the lineup. Mincher says, “I’d certainly like to,” and puts the chances at 50-50.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Minutemen this year, it’s that if they can walk, they can play.
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