Long after the Cardinals’ opener last night was officially postponed and Busch Stadium emptied of all its fans, Albert Pujols sat down with a handful of reporters to give them the scoop on his ailing elbow. Only it wasn’t his usual answer.

Widely understood to be a “high-grade tear” of the ligament, the problem with Pujols’s elbow is actually “a mechanical malfunction in my bionic implant,” according to Pujols.

“I feel I owe it to my teammates, the fans and my family to address [this] now,” Pujols said. “Several years ago, when I hurt my elbow, I went to Dr. Eduardo Lopez in the Dominican to have him do the surgery.”

The implant, designed to assist stroke victims who have lost partial use of limbs, detects through a patient’s skin the electric waves accompanying muscular contractions and can complete the intended motion — like lifting a forearm or bending a knee.

Pujols stressed that he only had the bionic implant inserted once, and then only in an effort to recover from the injury and not enhance his performance. “If what I did was an error in judgment on my part, I’m sorry,” Pujols said. “I accept responsibility for that one day.” Pujols noted that the experimental surgery was not illegal back then, nor is it even illegal now.

Dr. L. Beauxregard, an assistant to Dr. James Andrews in Birmingham, Ala., reiterated that the so-called bionic elbow wouldn’t necessarily improve performance. “Yes, it’s going to add perhaps 50 to 100 feet to your hits,” Beauxregard said. “But you still have to make contact.”

MLB will likely take no action, according to Bob DuPuy, chief operating officer of Major League Baseball. “While the commissioner and Major League Baseball are concerned about the use of bionic implants by players, we don’t foresee any suspensions [as a result of] it,” Dupuy said.

Donald Fehr, Executive Director of the players union, also weighed in. “The players want to rid their game of the use of performance-enhancing bionics, and the testing agreements we have reached with the owners have served and will continue to serve that goal,” Fehr said. “The evidence we have suggests that it is working well.

Cardinal manager Tony La Russa denied any malfeasance by his star player. “I’ve known Albert for a long time, and I can tell you that everything he has gotten in this game, he has earned through hard work,” he said.

It’s unclear what is going to happen. The malfunctioning of the implant is sporadic, and replacement parts are hard to come by. Pujols says he hopes that fans will understand and that by coming clean now, the whole situation “will go away soon.”

“Fans are coming out in [record] numbers, mang,” Pujols said. “People just want us to play ball.”

When asked about whether Lopez was a licensed team physician, Pujols replied, “No. But he knows how to fix things real good.”

Dr. Lopez, a line engineer at the Hasbro toy assembly plant in Las Matas, could not be reached for comment.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 11:52 am and is filed under fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.