At the Post-Dispatch Joe Strauss has the unpleasant task of listing David Freese's countless leg injuries to a horrified St. Louis Cardinals fanbase as the team's perpetually injured next-first-baseman reports to Spring Training. To put his maladies in a short, easy to remember list, like that old Henry VIII's wives device (divorce, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived!), they are: Car accident, surgery, DUI; deep bruise, dropped weight, damaged tendons. The prosody isn't quite so elegant, there.
↵In any case, Freese has proclaimed himself mostly healthy in 2011, and Tony La Russa has suggested the Cardinals see him as an almost-full-time presence at third base, at least until late in the season. But the revelations in the article are about just how much pain Freese was in over the last two years—he says he was "walking on glass"—and that in the offseason he's been helped out, mentally and physically, by Matt Holliday, who in this article and in general is rapidly ascending the Appears To Be A Nice Guy power rankings.
↵Seriously, what hasn't he done since missing that ball in Los Angeles? He's offered to defer additional money to keep Albert Pujols around, he's had one of the best seasons of his career, and now he's mentoring David Freese, who's apparently been sober for a year. And he's under contract!
↵