Still no one can predict Ike's return

Ike Davis isn't hitting. He isn't running. Instead, the injured Mets first baseman has been spending five hours a day sitting on a bucket next to a lake in Port St. Lucie, Fla., waiting for the fish to nibble.

"I can't even fish the way I like to because it would involve walking around," said Davis, who is trying to recover from a bone bruise and sprained left ankle that he suffered more than three weeks ago.

Davis, who was at Citi Field on Friday visiting with his teammates, said the toughest thing about the injury is that neither he nor Mets doctors have a timetable for when he will be able to return to action.

"The thing is, with something like this, no one knows," said Davis, 24. "Hopefully, it's next week or two days from now, but I couldn't tell you. The doctors don't know."

Davis had an MRI on Tuesday at the Hospital for Special Surgery, and it revealed that the ankle is not healing. He has to wear a special orthotic boot for at least three more weeks until he is re-evaluated. The only time he can take it off is when he is lying down at home or rehabbing.

Davis injured his ankle May 10 in Colorado. He was trying to catch a pop-up when he collided with David Wright.

"I think when David and me ran into each other, I was rolling my ankle and David kneed me in the shin, and that kind of drove my bone down at an awkward angle and that's how my two bones scraped," Davis said of the bone bruise. "Usually, when you sprain your ankle, you don't have a bone bruise in the middle of your joint."

Davis said he initially thought he had suffered just a sprain and would be back in the lineup the next day. But he had trouble running the next day. And the day after. The Mets then put him on the disabled list and sent him to Port St. Lucie to rehab.

Davis, who was hitting .302 at the time of the injury, will be with the team over the weekend. He'll head back to Port St. Lucie on Monday when the Mets head out on a 10-day road trip.

General manager Sandy Alderson said earlier in the week that the team hopes Davis can return before the All-Star break, but he offered no assurances. "I would hope that's a little long,'' he said. "But I'm not a physician."

Unfortunately for the Mets, the not-so-quick-to-heal bone bruise phenomenon is not a new one. Carlos Beltran went down with a bone bruise in his knee in 2009 and ended up missing 21/2 months.