Editor's Note: This story was originally published on May 3. On Thursday, Angels GM Perry Minasian announced that Mike Trout retore his meniscus and will be out for the remainder of the 2024 season.
Baseball history is filled with "what-if?" stories about some of its greatest players. It's a genre into which Los Angeles Angels superstar Mike Trout can now be classified, thanks to his ever-extending run to terrible injury luck.
There are so many poignant titles in this category. What if Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Bob Feller and so many others had not lost years to military service? What if Dizzy Dean had not broken his toe in the 1937 All-Star Game? What if Tony Conigliaro had not been hit in the face by a pitch? And the biggest of all: What if big league baseball had never been segregated on the basis of race?
The higher the stakes, the more we remember these things that didn't happen, and the more we speculate about alternate realities. In Trout's case, he remains a work in progress. All we can say for sure at this point is that as the years pass, more and more of Trout's greatness is being left on the training table.
Now that Trout is down again, this time with knee surgery that at the very least will take him out of action into the summer, we have to ask: How will the injuries affect Trout's legacy?