Savers without stats

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Sometimes we may take Herm Schneider for granted, but we really have one of the best trainers in the game. To Herm Schneider!

 

Savers without stats

Trainers Herm Schneider of the Whites Sox and Dave Groeschner of the Cubs play vital roles in keeping players healthy and rehabbing them

By David Haugh

Tribune staff reporter

June 27, 2004

 

The memory of March 21, 1997, still produces an emotional twinge longtime White Sox trainer Herm Schneider can't prevent.

 

Schneider was in the Sox's dugout during a spring-training game when former third baseman Robin Ventura slid awkwardly into home plate. Ventura suffered a compound fracture of his right ankle, an injury so gruesome that one woman who saw the bone protruding from Ventura's lower leg fainted. "My worst day," said Schneider, now in his 25th year with the Sox.

 

One of his best days, Schneider recalled before Sunday's 9-4 Sox victory over the Cubs, came when Ventura returned that July after four months of arduous rehabilitation.

 

Time proved to be as effective a healer as rest and exercise for Ventura, as well as for Schneider. It can be the best prescription for trauma.

 

"It takes a while to get past something like that as a trainer," Schneider acknowledged.

 

Dave Groeschner, Schneider's counterpart in his first year with the Cubs, realizes that.

 

But part of Groeschner still feels as if he has brought nothing but bad luck with him from San Francisco, where he spent the last five years as an assistant trainer for the Giants.

 

Part of Groeschner can't help but wonder whether the Cubs would still be on pace to set a season record for players on the disabled list if he had done his job better.

 

The other part of him knows that's as ridiculous as suggesting he held a pepper shaker under Sammy Sosa's nose to make him sneeze and strain his back last month.

 

But if the trainer's room isn't empty, the trainer blames himself.

 

"If I didn't feel totally responsible, I wouldn't be doing my job," said Groeschner, 32, hired in January to replace Dave Tumbas. "You can't prevent something like [shortstop] Alex Gonzalez breaking his wrist, but it's our job to get him back as soon as possible."

 

The longer the list, the taller the task for a team that began the season as one of the favorites to win the National League. Sunday began with Groeschner adding yet another Cub to his patient inventory.

 

Left-handed reliever Mike Remlinger, one of 10 Cubs to spend time on the disabled list this season, returned to the DL with tendinitis in his shoulder. A few hours before the Cubs announced that move, Groeschner anxiously waited to see how injured starting pitcher Kerry Wood's arm responded to the 42 pitches he threw during a simulated game at Wrigley Field.

 

Then in the third inning, right fielder Todd Hollandsworth left the game after fouling a pitch off his right shin. X-rays were negative, and Groeschner and assistant trainer Sandy Krum will wait until Monday before deciding what course of action to take on Hollandsworth.

 

At this rate, Groeschner will end the season with more saves than anyone in the Cubs' bullpen.

 

"I hired Dave because I felt his strengths were in rehab and strength and conditioning, and unfortunately he's in a year where, guess what, his strengths are being tested," Cubs general manager Jim Hendry said. "But you can't pin everything on the trainer. I told him that a couple of weeks ago when he was down about things."

 

There have been more than a few of those days for Groeschner. He sees his wife Aimee and 2-year-old daughter Katie even less than expected because he has spent so many days off inside his overcrowded trainer's room.

 

He smiled and said he was looking forward to Monday because the Cubs don't have a game scheduled. But that was before Hollandsworth hurt his leg and Remlinger went back on the DL and life returned to abnormal for the rookie trainer.

 

"He probably doesn't have a minute to himself the whole day," Schneider said of Groeschner. "I feel for Dave because he doesn't have the track record to stand behind. I don't think people hold him responsible. But they want the player back yesterday, and sometimes that's just not possible."

 

Schneider cites the example of Sox right fielder Magglio Ordonez, who underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee on June 5, when Schneider conservatively projected the Sox star would be out four to six weeks. When discussing Ordonez's progress Sunday, Schneider sounded like a guy who wishes they would give out free calendars to the first 10,000 fans through the gate—as well as in the press box.

 

"When's Magglio coming back? When's Magglio coming back?" Schneider said, repeating a question heard several times a day around U.S. Cellular Field. "They see him walking around real good, hitting real good, but there's more to that picture. He's not running as well as he should be running. To me it's not a big deal, but to everybody else it is."

 

Schneider says he doesn't read newspapers, listen to sports-talk radio or even watch the TV news. That, he believes, insulates him from feeling outside pressure to push players before they are medically ready.

 

"People always come first and then the organization, and the organization wouldn't want it any other way," Schneider said. "They want me to get the guy healthy the first time, not the third time."

 

Keeping them healthy to begin with has become harder than ever.

 

"Maybe guys are bigger, stronger and faster and there's more stresses on the joints and they break down more," Schneider said. "It's not a perfect science why this is happening. If I could figure that out, I'd probably win the Nobel Peace Prize."

 

On the other side of town, Groeschner would settle for a little peace.