CINCINNATI--Reds starting pitcher Aaron Harang told the team yesterday that he felt a mysterious twinge in his pitching shoulder shortly after the team confirmed the hiring of Dusty Baker as manager. Harang, who hasn’t pitched in weeks, said the pain appeared “out of the blue” while he was watching television.

“It’s the strangest thing,” Harang said. “I was just sitting there watching Sportscenter and I saw the report that my team hired Dusty Baker. Then I felt this twinge in my shoulder. I knew something was really wrong because I could barely move it after that. It’s weird, because I haven’t thrown a baseball in weeks. Huh. Something triggered it. I guess we’ll never know what it was.”

In an odd coincidence, Dusty Baker is the manager credited with ruining the arms of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior while managing the Chicago Cubs. However, Harang dismissed any connection.

“I know Dusty has a reputation as an arm-killer, but you can’t blame him for this one,” Harang said. “He hasn’t even been our manager long enough to overwork me. And to his credit, he called me up the minute he heard the news. He said he was real sorry to hear about my shoulder and suggested I throw 500 pitches a day for the rest of the off-season in order to get my strength back.”

However, it now appears that Harang’s injury is only the beginning. One day after the 29-year-old reported his twinge, youngster Homer Bailey felt a “ripping sound” in his throwing shoulder and appears to be out for the entire 2008 season. Like Harang, Bailey’s injury also occurred during non-baseball related activity.

Said Bailey: “I was lying on a hammock in my backyard reading a magazine, when all of a sudden I felt this awful ripping sound in my shoulder. It felt like a thousand knives of fire were being plunged into my arm. I screamed in agony. I thought ‘What could this be?’ Turns out it was a torn rotator cuff. I have no idea how it happened. I just assumed maybe I turned the page too hard or something.”

It wasn’t until hours later that Bailey was informed that Dusty Baker had been hired as Reds manager.

“Once they told me Dusty was our new manager, all the pieces started falling into place,” he said. “First Kerry, then Mark, then Aaron, and now me. Jesus, how many more chances is this guy going to get?”

When reached for comment, Baker denied having anything to do with his two pitchers’ injuries. In fact, he blamed the previous regime for making them “too soft.”

“I had nothing to do with these injuries,” he said. “It doesn’t even make sense to assume that. The real reason probably has something to do with the previous manager’s insistence on babying them. You’ve got to stretch these kids out whenever possible if you don’t want to end up with arm injuries. Of course, now they call them ‘rotator cuffs,’ which is just a fancy way of saying shoulder-muscle-thingie.”

“Anyway, both of these guys will be fine. With the medical technology we have today, they’ll be back on the mound in no time, and I’ll keep them on a strict, 120 pitch limit for the first few games to make sure they’re ready.”

On Tuesday, pitcher Bronson Arroyo joined the list of the walking wounded when his arm unexpectedly fell off while using an ATM.

Copyright 2007, The Brushback - Do not reprint without permission. This article is satire and is not intended as actual news.