It was as if the injury gods had decided that first baseman J.T. Snow had been lucky long enough, having missed minimal time since he began his major-league career in 1992.
It seemed as if they had conspired to store up all his bad luck and unleash it all at once in one hideous, twisted scheme.
Snow had never spent a day on the disabled list before last season, but in a two-month span of 2001, he was on the DL three times with a bruised rib, strained groin and gastroenteritis. Those certainly were factors in why he hit only .246 with eight home runs and 34 RBIs after averaging 21 homers and 94 RBIs in his first four seasons with the Giants.
“I thought about it all off-season, not so much the year itself but hoping that I never have to go through something like that again,” Snow said. “When you’re used to playing every day, it’s hard coming back when you’re hurt. I had never experienced that before. I just tried to do what I could and help the team.”
In a cruel reminder of last season, Snow sprained his left ankle covering first on bunt plays in spring prqctice, but the injury is considered minor, said trainer Stan Conte.
Last season Snow finished with a career-low 285 at-bats and never mounted a sustained hot stretch, provoking the front office to acquire first baseman Andres Galarraga at midseason to jump-start a stagnant offense.
“He did a great job when he was here,” Snow said of Galarraga. “I just had to stay positive and pull for the team. Did I want to be out there every day? Of course. I think the thing I missed the most was competing every day and coming to the ballpark knowing that you were playing.”
Snow and Giants hitting coach Gene Clines view last season as more an aberration than a trend. Snow is too young–he turned 34 Tuesday–for his skills to erode so quickly.
“I look for a big year from him,” Clines said. “He’s coming in with a real positive attitude. I’ve just got a gut feeling. One bad year doesn’t mean that you’ve lost it. Everybody is going to have a bad year, a year where a lot of things were involved, like his health and injuries.”
Snow’s career also could be resuscitated by the presence of outfielder Reggie Sanders, who has a pedigree that mirrors former Giant Ellis Burks: clubhouse leader, often injured, yet an offensive force when healthy.
Burks and Snow flip-flopped hitting behind cleanup man Jeff Kent in 2000, the year Snow drove in 96 runs. There was no player close to Burks’ stature flanking Snow last season.
“Reggie and David Bell are going to help out a lot,” Snow said. “We missed Ellis, and we missed Bill Mueller a lot. All that we went through and the way [manager] Dusty Baker patched together the lineup, we did a pretty good job to stay in the race.”
Snow has two more years left on his contract and it’s far too early to worry about where he’ll be playing in the future. But he moved from his longtime home in Southern California to the Bay Area over the winter, providing a clue that he’d prefer to retire a Giant.
“I like it here,” he said. “I like what we’ve done. I think with this core of guys, with the attitude we have, we’ll always be competitive.
“This is my sixth year here and we’ve had a good run considering where we were before I got here.”