Jake Peavy hurt team, himself with attempt to break camp with Sox

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

Jake Peavy says he’s going to be smart about taking care of his sore shoulder. Swell.

It’s like a guy in a full-body cast saying that, from now on, he’ll look both ways before crossing the street. You tell him you’re happy he has learned his lesson and ask him if he’d like the drool on his chin wiped off.

The time for Peavy to be smart was a week ago or two weeks ago or a month ago, when he was hellbent on being in the rotation for the beginning of the regular season.

The White Sox have shelved him because of tendinitis in his right rotator cuff and hope to have him back by the end of April. But they have no earthly idea if they will, given the fact that they never seem to know if Peavy is telling them the truth.

There’s a lot we don’t know when it comes to his shoulder issues. How bad did the pain truly get before he told the Sox he was hurting? Did the latest trouble have anything to do with the surgery he underwent last July to repair the detached latissimus dorsi in his right shoulder?

And, above all, what was the rush?

It’s the question almost everyone on the outside of the Sox’ compound has been asking for weeks. Why did Peavy need to set a land-speed record from the dugout to the mound?

Macho madness

Ultimately, it’s his fault and no one else’s. He says manager Ozzie Guillen had the final say on how much he pitched in spring training, but Guillen needed to have reliable information. The Sox made their decision based largely on Peavy’s word.

You might recall that Peavy’s word last year was “mum.’’ He didn’t tell Guillen he was having arm troubles until it was too late. Peavy is from the Rambo School of Macho in which you don’t admit to injury. In the end, the team ends up feeling the pain the most acutely.

What has happened to him is the result of a raging competitive streak and an unfortunate belief that athletes are always supposed to tough it out through injuries.

“I don’t know how many guys I want on my team who don’t want the ball here or there,’’ he told reporters the other day. “If you go the other way and shut yourself down, there are going to be people in your clubhouse questioning, ‘He did this last time out. How can he go out and try to pitch for us?’  ’’

Who cares what other people think? More than that, it’s hard to believe his teammates admire that he tried to rush back from injury in this camp, especially after he bluffed his way to the mound last season and got himself hurt worse.

To Peavy, there is nobility in trying to play through injuries. And there’s something to that; the great ones often do ignore pain. But the he-man way hasn’t worked for him.

A pitcher can pitch hurt, but he’s going to get found out eventually, the way a plagiarist is going to get caught eventually. The speed gun will reveal that his velocity has dipped. His ERA will skyrocket. He won’t always be able to hide his pain, try as he might.

Peavy is the knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” who, when he loses both arms in a sword fight, refers to it as “just a flesh wound’’ and wants to keep battling. It might be funny if the Sox weren’t on the hook for $33 million over the next two seasons.

People have been quick to criticize the team’s brass and medical staff, the idea being that someone as driven as Peavy needed to be saved from himself. But he’s going into his 10th season, he’s a two-time All-Star and he’s a former Cy Young winner. A manager has to give a player with that resumé some latitude. A manager figures the player has been around long enough to do what’s best for the team.

This particular manager has learned his lesson.

No reason to hurry

The worst thing about the Peavy situation is that having him ready early in April behooved nobody. There isn’t much of a need for a fifth starter at the beginning of the season. Enthusiasm got in the way of reason.

After playing catch Tuesday, Peavy said his shoulder felt “quite a bit better.’’ The Sox and their fans can’t be blamed if they’re having trust issues.

He says he’s going to be smart about his shoulder, though it seems a little late for that. The test is over, and now Peavy says he’s going to start studying. Swell.