Brandon Woodruff and the Timber Truck

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Wm. Glasheen/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

I know there's a new Final Destination movie out there right now. I don't know much about it. I don't go in for horror films, or even many thrillers, and I've never seen any of the previous movies in the franchise. However, like everyone else with the unfortunate addiction to scrolling on the internet, I have seen that one clip from one of the early Final Destination flicks—the one with the massive traffic accident, which begins... actually, I'm not sure exactly how it begins, but it involves and is certainly principally worsened by a logging truck from which the huge timbers break free, bouncing and rolling across the highway like torpedoes fired by Lady Luck in a fit of pique.

If I understand the basic premise of the series correctly, that scene is an example of Death flexing a little. It's getting cocky. It's throwing all of its favorite, vicious little wrinkles at the characters who appear in the scene, gilding the lily of catastrophe. In fact, even if that's not what the movie intends, it's what that scene conveys. Death has never felt more inevitable than in that scene, and therefore, the scene is one of the most anxiety-inducing things on the web. (Which, given the state of the real world, is saying something.)

That's what it's been like, watching Brandon Woodruff try to finish the long journey back to the majors after the shoulder capsule surgery he required in the fall of 2023. He's already done an extraordinary amount of work to get back to this point, but twice, now, he's been on the cusp of the majors, only to be forced to shut things down and take a step back. The first time, when the problem was a balky ankle, you could shrug and accept it. This time, when the delay of his reinstatement came in the form of a deadly projectile aimed right at his pitching elbow, it's much more painful—and pretty infuriating, if we're honest with ourselves. Death's baseball-loving cousin, Injury, is flexing now. It's ostentatious, and it's mean.

Worse, it's unoriginal. I can vividly recall, 20 years ago to the week, when Injury tried this same trick. Mark Prior had a chance to be one of the great pitchers of his generation. Drafted second overall in 2001, he debuted less than a year later, on much the same timeline and with much the same fanfare as Stephen Strasburg or Paul Skenes. He was electric right away, racking up strikeouts and limiting walks. Almost immediately, though, Injury made clear that it didn't care for Prior and didn't want him to do well. A collision with Atlanta second baseman Marcus Giles nearly ruined Prior's breakout season in 2003. He developed Achilles tendonitis in early 2004 and got a very late start to his season. He began 2005 with elbow inflammation, forcing a short stint on the disabled list to start the year. Through all of that, though, he flashed plenty of brilliance. He was still very much an ace in 2003, and for stretches in both 2004 and early 2005, he still proved capable of being that guy.

On May 27, 2005, the Cubs played the Rockies at Wrigley Field. It was 1-1 going into the top of the fourth, when Colorado slugger Brad Hawpe stepped into the box and hit a line drive off Prior—right on his pitching elbow. The force of the blow was so great that two things happened: the ball popped into the air and floated into foul territory beyond the third-base bag, allowing Cubs third baseman Aramis Ramírez to catch it for an out; and Prior's elbow cracked badly, sending him howling to the ground with the iniury that would finally, truly derail his career. He missed a month, and when he came back, both walks and home runs were more of a problem for him. His ERA bloated. In 2006, it exploded, and then so did his shoulder. He would spend another half-decade pitching in the minors, between major injuries (including shoulder capsule surgery), but he'd never make it back to the majors.

While Injury didn't take the same instant disliking to Woodruff that it did to Prior, it made up its mind about him back in 2023. The shoulder surgery was just how that year ended; it had already been truncated by shoulder issues. Woodruff is no longer favored by the baseball gods. They're trying to get rid of him now.

Woodruff got a bit luckier than Prior did, it appears. He suffered a contusion, but not a break, when he caught a liner off the elbow. He might have an easier path back, though his stuff was diminished even before he took that hit. Still, it sure feels like the universe wants him to be done meaningfully contributing to big-league teams on the mound.

That's why, more than ever, I'll be fiercely rooting for Woodruff. French philosopher and writer Albert Camus believed that the fundamental tension of being human is that the universe is neither cruel nor kind. It's mindless and soulless, and that feels cruel to humans, because we have wired ourselves to seek—to need—meaning, but the very fabric of existence is meaningless. The absurdity of our quest to understand and contextualize that which defies understanding and doesn't bear contextual framing is what makes life so hard, so much of the time.

The conflict humans face, then, is the question of whether even to keep on in the face of that reality. Is life worth living, once we acknowledge its lack of a higher meaning than what we can see and touch? Everyone, Camus said, must answer that for themselves, but he did offer an answer, in the person of the mythical Greek God, Sisyphus. As a punishment for tricking the gods, Sisyphus has to push a boulder up a mountain every day—only to find himself back at the bottom of that mountain, over and over again, with the boulder still needing to be pushed. It's become one of our most familiar metaphors for powerlessness, and the crushing weight of mundanity—but Camus would have us see it as a moment of triumph.

We can find both joy and meaning in, to use a word Camus walked around without stepping in but which is perfect for our modern moment, pettiness—maybe even spite. If the gods have condemned us to being unable to communicate with them or to comprehend their grand plans, we have one refuge: our simple fate and the defiant satisfaction we can find in it. 

"His fate belongs to him," Camus wrote of Sisyphus. "His rock is his thing."

Woodruff's rock is his thing, too. The ball in his hand, after all the times Injury has tried to knock it out for good, is a symbol of the inexhaustible human capacity to find hope and to keep climbing, even when it feels pointless or endless. For years, surely, Woodruff pitched toward the goal of being the go-to guy on a World Series team or of cradling a Cy Young Award, as teammate Corbin Burnes got to do four years ago. Those goals are over, now. His best hope might be to establish himself at the back end of the Milwaukee rotation, and see them make a charge through October to the franchise's first pennant in over 40 years—with him as a secondary piece, instead of an indispensable one.

No matter. There's a new set of stakes at hand. Now that he's been nearly thwarted altogether, the meaning of success for Woodruff has changed, as perhaps it can for us, too. All that matters, right now, is that Woodruff maintain focus and hope, and get back onto a big-league mound. This is what Camus called "the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks." Destiny be damned, and nine-figure contracts be forgotten, Woodruff wins just by continuing when there is so much implict reason to quit.

"This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile," Camus wrote of his own hero. "Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart."

The pitcher's mound is just 10 inches high, but right now, it's a Sisyphean mountain, and we find (and leave) Woodruff back at the foot of it. If he does surmount it again, though, it'll be a truly thrilling moment—not because of what it would mean for the 2025 Brewers, or even for Woodruff's long-term prospects, but because he'll be there, at the top, for however long he has until the new Sisyphean cycle begins: of hurling oneself off that tiny mountain to let the rock fly, thereby to get it back and climb back into position for the next launch.

View full article

[Michael Trzinski]

Our 'Sissyfuss' has pushed the rock up the hill enough. Time for him to get his reward!!

[BeerSlide]

Now that's some entertaining writing. Thank you