Second base can be quite hazardous

PHOENIX

In a clubhouse hallway, Justin Turner was talking this week about the hazards of playing second base when Daniel Murphy came around the corner, freshly outfitted with a knee brace and crutches.

"Let's see where it got you," Murphy said.

The puzzled Turner wasn't sure what he meant until Murphy continued, "The pitch. You got hit last night, right?"

Hearing that, Turner nodded, then pulled up his T-shirt to reveal the deep purple bruise just below his rib cage. "Right in the boiler," Murphy said, smiling. "I've seen that movie."

Murphy starred in his own horror flick Sunday when the Braves' Jose Constanza crushed his left knee with a feet-first slide into second base. He refuses to watch a replay of the incident, which cost him the rest of this season thanks to a sprained medial collateral ligament.

But Turner has viewed it a number of times and has tried to figure out what went wrong. He has plenty of experience at the position. "I've been playing second base pretty much my whole life," he said.

It wasn't so much the technique that doomed Murphy, just the execution of a move Turner employs against base-stealers. "I've heard different opinions on it," Turner said. "Whether he was in a bad position or a good position. But I drop my left knee down all the time, and I think the difference between when I drop my knee down and what [Murphy] did is he didn't get his knee all the way on the ground.

"His knee was kind of up in limbo, so when he got slid into, that really wrenched his knee. When I put my knee down, my knee is on the ground, so when they slide into me, they're sliding into me -- my knee is not going to go anywhere."

Therein lies the problem with second base. Contact comes with the territory, more so than any other position on the field, and avoiding those shots -- or smartly absorbing them -- is a matter of survival. It's not unlike what a quarterback faces, complete with blindside hits.

Despite the circumstances of Murphy's latest injury, a more dangerous scenario involves turning a double play. That's what KO'd Murphy last season during rehab at Triple-A Buffalo, when a takeout slide damaged the MCL in his right knee.

A second baseman often is defenseless, unable to see the oncoming runner until the moment before impact. "Everyone has got that clock in their head," Turner said. "You know who's running, you know how hard the ball is hit, so you can tell if someone bobbles it, then obviously they're going to be another step closer to you. There's a million things that go into it.

"But you can't determine what you're going to do until you see the ball. If you get a bad feed, you have to go to the ball. If I'm going to get hit, I have to get off your feet. A lot of times they'll slide and I'll just pick my leg up and they'll slide underneath me."

The key is that Turner doesn't need to think. It's second nature by now. But Murphy doesn't seem to be there yet. If not for the injury to Ike Davis that forced him to play first, Murphy could have benefited from his continuing education at second.

"It's something again that reinforces the fact that these guys, as great athletes as they are, you just can't go out there and play some position you're unfamiliar with," Terry Collins said. "It all comes with the more reps you get out there, and unfortunately, due to what's happened this year, Dan never got them."

Even so, it also helps to be lucky. Turner gets knocked over on a nightly basis. Fortunately, he keeps managing to get back up, usually with a souvenir.

"I can live with that," Turner said. "I've got plenty of bruises."