The New York Yankees usually don't endear themselves to baseball fans, and this is no exception. Hank Steinbrenner, a co-chairman of the Yankees, exclaimed:

The National League needs to join the 21st century. I've got my pitchers running the bases, and one of them gets hurt. That was a rule from the 1800s.

Putting aside the silliness of his quote, he is simply frustrated that his star pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, is out with a Lisfranc fracture and a torn leg tendon. The injury occurred when Chien-Ming Wang was attempting to run the bases and score. He did score, but pulled up lame.

What is a  Lisfranc fracture? Stay with me on this history lesson. Dr. Jacques Lisfranc de St. Martin was a French doctor from the Napolean era. He was the first one to notice an injury to the ligaments in your foot that allow movement and rotation. The fracture occurs when any number of the small bones in the mid foot fracture. 

Yadier Molina of the St. Louis Cardinals did what good catchers do. He didn't budge. He stood his ground. The runner, haplessly out of options, had one path to the run, and it went through Molina. Crash.

At the end of the violence, both men were on the ground. The runner looked, the catcher showed and the umpire called an out.

So it went with the Phillies vs. Cardinals last night. The catcher, Yadier Molina, and the runner, Eric Bruntlett, played the game of football on a baseball field. Molina did the unthinkable by holding onto the ball after getting nailed. Knobberslocked. Wake up next weekend hit.

Wow, the Chicago Cubs really are snake bit. They are having a good year and their chief rivals lost their big gun with a torn calf muscle. Time to pownce and take over the division, right?

Not so fast. These are the Cubbies after all.

Last night, Alfonso Soriano broke his hand when he was hit by a Jeff Bennett pitch. The screams you heard didn't come from Soriano, but the millions of Cubs fans.  

What is a broken hand? We'll skip telling you what a hand is and jump to the 27 bones that comprise your hand. Yes, 27 bones. A broken hand is when one of the 27 bones breaks. Soriano broke a metacarpal, which are the bones comprising the palm.

Yeah, so it's always fun with the media doesn't really dig into a story. For instance, Albert Pujols hits a groundball, takes a step to run the bases and goes down like he's shot. The St. Louis Cardinals are calling it a strained calf, which is funny considering it's a torn calf muscle.

There are a couple of things you need to know before we continue discussing a torn calf muscle:

Chipper Jones is off to an incredible start in the 2008 season. His lifetimes stats show that he's a pretty good player, but this year he's been unreal. Of course, an injury is throwing a kink into those plans.

Chipper's injury is termed a slight tear in the quadriceps. Of course, having covered how to treat a quadriceps tear in the past, we know there are different degrees of quadriceps tears. Chipper's appears to be a slight tear that was diagnosed by a doctor testing the injury physically.

Man, I really love watching Tadahito Iguchi play baseball. He's an import from Japan, and his baseball career hasn't been awesome. Still, I love watching him play for a couple of reasons:

1) He still has a youngster's love and enthusiasm for the game.

2) The photos of him playing capture this spirit and never disappoint.

It was a bummer to see that Tadahito Iguchi was put on the disabled list for a separated shoulder this week. For an infielder, well, any baseball player, a separated shoulder affects all parts of your game. Your shoulder acts as a lever joint helping you throw, hit and even run in baseball. When you suffer a separated shoulder it's very painful. 

Wow. The Red Sox and Rays really don't like each other. In the amazing fight from yesterday you can see that the Red Sox don't like an upstart team like the Rays getting the limelight. Seriously, the fight was one for the record books. Take a gander.

Someone at the game captured it on video:

Sometimes baseball is just cruel. Look no further than last year's MVP Jimmy Rollins. For the first time in his career, he's going on the disabled list with a sprained ankle. It's quite a blow for the Phillies and for Jimmy himself. Jimmy's ability is helped greatly by his speed, which a sprained ankle will take away from.

Jimmy Rollins himself understands this:

My game is speed and I don't have much of that now.

A sprained ankle is literally an anchor for a speedster like Rollins. It affects everything about the movement of running and stopping. Laugh if you will, but stopping is an important part of being able to run and push on the basepaths.

How to prevent pulled hamstrings photoThe Cleveland Indians have a pretty good shot at making some noise this year, but they lost Victor Martinez in the home opener. It looks to be just a pulled hamstring, but there is a pending MRI. Cue ominous music. How did Victor hurt his hamstring? Running to second base. Yes. He was running from one base to another. Nothing heroic nor legendary.

We spoke about how to treat pulled hamstrings in the past. This time we thought we'd talk through pulled hamstring injury prevention.

Vladimir Guerrero and the Los Angeles Angels are in trouble. They are down 2-0 to the Boston Red Sox and are looking at the business end of a sweep. To make matters worse, Vlad was nailed by a pitch from Manny Delcarmen. Vlad was removed from the game with a shoulder contusion.

What is a shoulder contusion? A shoulder contusion is a fancy way of saying shoulder bruise. A contusion is a bruise. If you watch the replays on TV, you'll see Vlad takes a nasty pitch to his left shoulder. This is what caused his bruise. Bruises occur due to blunt force trauma to an area of your body. In most cases the bruise is in soft tissue. When this occurs damage to your capillaries has happened.