Glavine makes first career trip to DL

Glavine makes first career trip to DL
Veteran's hamstring prevents him from making scheduled start
By Jon Cooper / Special to MLB.com

ATLANTA -- Over his long career, Tom Glavine had done just about everything a pitcher can do. On Friday night, the 42-year-old lefty made another career first, this one very much unwelcome.

He is going to the disabled list. It is the first such trip in his 22-year career.

For a workhorse like Glavine, who has made at least 33 starts every year but two since 1988 (those two seasons he made 29 and 32), it wasn't an easy decision for him to hear, or to live with.

"I've been on the DL, like, two hours and I hate it," said Glavine after Friday night's game. "You feel like you've let people down. It's not an easy pill to swallow, but I hope that it's the intelligent choice and the right choice for the long term. But for now it's not going to be something that's easy for me to come to grips with. I'll do what I have to do to make sure that 12 days or nine days from now, I'm ready to go. "

"It's really tough," added manager Bobby Cox. "It's a tough decision. He's a warrior. He was going to try it but we're the ones that stopped it."

Glavine, who left his last start Sunday afternoon in Washington with a strained right hamstring after facing only five batters, thought that he would be ready to make his scheduled start on Saturday. But after being examined by Braves doctors Friday afternoon, it was determined that the hamstring had not healed sufficiently to allow Glavine to pitch.

"I had every intention of pitching tomorrow," said Glavine, who didn't receive the news from Dr. Joe Chandler until around 7:15 ET on Friday night. "It's as big a surprise to me that I'm not pitching tomorrow, as it is everybody else. I've never had an experience with my legs or my hamstrings. You defer to Dr. Chandler.

"I've pitched with a broken rib," Glavine added. "If this was the kind of thing where I could give myself a Novocaine shot in the hamstring and go out there and pitch, I'd go do it. But that's not the kind of thing you can do. I have to give it time to heal. Ten days from now it's going to be fine, and we'll forget all about it a month from now."

Chuck James was called up from Triple-A Richmond to take Glavine's place.

"The good thing about some of the depth that we accumulated over the offseason is that we've got some guys that are down in Triple-A that have some experience," said Chipper Jones. "They're going to come up here and not be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. They're going to go out and pitch like it's going to be their last start."

Prior to the injury Sunday, Glavine had allowed one earned run and 10 hits in his previous two starts, covering 11 1/3 innings.

The move is retroactive to April 14, so the earliest he can come back is April 29, when the Braves are in Washington.