Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins has a clogged kidney. Not your usual baseball injury, but it's interesting nonetheless. Joe had surgery at the vaunted Mayo Clinic, which makes sense since he's in Minnesota.

The press reports haven't noted Joe's exact condition, but they did mention one critical point. Twins' General Manager Bill Smith said:

It's something he's had since birth. It is something that has bothered him more lately. Everything went fine and he will be ready for the season.

Zydrunas Ilgauskas is a big dude. He runs 7 foot 3 and comes in at 260 pounds. He's on the disabled list for the Cleveland Caviliers for at least a month with a bone chip in his ankle. Interesting. Why? Well, he has a history of foot problems and this is just the latest.

Josh Beckett is known as a post season ace. He's 6-2 in the post season including game 7s, so it comes as no surprise that the Boston Red Sox are concerned about his latest injury. The injury is a pulled oblique muscle, which can be very harmful for a pitcher. Josh Beckett's injury happened during a warm up session.

There are four oblique muscles in the human body. The one that Josh Beckett has hurt is the abdominal external oblique muscle, so we're just going to call it an oblique from here on out. 

I have to admit, these are the kind of stories I love. Going in I know next to nothing about the brachial plexus, which excites me. I get to learn something new and, hopefully, you do too. This is a story about Chris Carpenter, the oft injured St. Louis Cardinals pitcher. Carpenter is suffering from an injury of the brachial plexus, which inhibits his pitching. According to Dr. George Paletta:

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.