Yu Darvish admits even he wondered if injury was all in his head

Share

For Yu Darvish, the Cubs' biggest free agency acquisition this past winter, the toll of wondering just what was wrong with his throwing arm had begun to wear even on him. And it had left him questioning his own mental state.
 
"I kind of speculated that that might be a factor, the mental side, but with the diagnosis I’m relieved to know that it’s not, and there’s something serious in my arm," Darvish told reporters through an interpreter prior to Thursday's game.
 
The questions came when his initial MRI this season indicated only triceps tightness. Darvish said he felt pain beyond normal tightness, but as he attempted to rehab from the initial diagnosis, he was increasingly unsure about what was really going on.
 
"Until the diagnosis, there was some time that I thought it could be my mental side because there was an unknown factor.," Darvish said. 
 
And as the time grew between his last start for the Cubs on May 20 and his projected return, fans and media alike aired their own questions about what was happening with the prize of the offseason. Some speculation went so far as to assert that he was faking, but Darvish made plain that that was never the case.
 
"You can’t really tell how much that hurts because you’re not that person, so it’s hard to think of it as if you are that person," Darvish said. "I think it’s just natural for me to receive those kind of comments toward me because they don’t really understand where the pain is and how much the pain is."
 
Joe Maddon agreed, slamming the notion that what Darvish was experiencing was anything but genuine.
 
"If you’ve played at all, you know how you feel. No one else actually does. When people start to question that based on their own values, wherever they came from, how they were raised, all that stuff, everybody's worried about whether a guy’s faking it," Maddon said. "Really it’s a bad method."
 
"When an athlete tells you—a world-class athlete—tells you that things are not right, I believe him."
 
And yet, Darvish on more than one occasion Thursday was candid about his own questions regarding his mental state. If it was just tightness, why was he in so much pain? 
 
Darvish shared earlier this season that before being traded to the Dodgers last July, he had thought about retiring after the 2017 season. With the weight of last year's World Series starts and this year's injury, it might be fair to wonder if that's happening again. And when asked by NBC Chicago's Kelly Crull about whether the thought of retirement had crept up again, Darvish didn't say no.
 
"If this was something in regards to my mental, say, weakness, then this just proves that baseball isn’t my sport, shouldn’t be what I’m doing," Darvish said. "But with the diagnosis, it’s been diagnosed that there was something with my arm, so it only makes me get stronger going forward."
 
The definitive diagnosis probably gives reason for optimism for both Darvish and Cubs fans while at least indirectly answering the retirement question. It also answers the question that had been on even Darvish's mind, and it has clearly motivated him for a strong return in 2019.

Contact Us