Okajima Crosses The Finish Line
by Texy
2008 December 14 at 11:02 pm
Back on Thursday, I posted about Hideki Okajima’s plans to run in the Honolulu Marathon. The story picked up steam on Friday, with postings on Sox blogs around the internet- and the Globe discovered that the Red Sox didn’t know of Oki’s race plans. Per the Globe, they weren’t exactly excited about it: “One team official said the Sox were not pleased and would have discouraged him had the team been apprised of his decision.”
But concerns of the front office be damned, Oki threw caution to the wind and ran in the race earlier today – crossing the finish line in just over 6 hours.
Of course, he wore bib number 37.
Congrats to Okajima – 26.2 miles definitely ain’t nothing to sneeze at.
He may have finished 50 minutes behind the other okajima but he is still my favorite one
IF the Sox are actually displeased, I think they’re being silly. He ran a marathon…it’s not a contact sport. There is very little chance of any injury to his arm or shoulder, which is all they need to worry about =)
So long as he doesn’t get shut down at the end of April, congrats Oki!
While there is little chance of injury to his upper body, a huge part of pitching uses legs, and leg issues can really affect control…after running that far, your legs don’t feel the same for a few weeks, so hopefully he’ll be ready to go in February.
Congrats Oki!
I agree it probably isn’t a huge issue, but I can see why the BoSox trainers might be concerned. Oki should have at least let the trainers know what he was doing…so they could advise, etc.
And yeah, if he got a leg injury it could definitely affect his pitching. It does look like he took it pretty easy…jogging comfortably and he even said walking at times, so I think all in all…he was pretty safe about it.
I still say congrats…26 miles at even a walking pace is a huge accomplishment.
Aww I love him. Congrats, Oki!