SEATTLE (AP) -J.D. Drew revealed Friday that he missed two games with the Boston Red Sox and most of a third while his son recovered from extensive hip surgery.
Drew, who has started 83 games in right field this season, was not in the lineup against Seattle because manager Terry Francona said he wanted Drew to ease back into his daily baseball routine.
Drew’s only son, 17-month-old Jack, recently broke his collarbone. But when doctors began treating that, they noticed he had a hip disorder that required surgery.
“I thought it would be quick,” Drew said in the clubhouse before batting practice.
“The toughest thing was, he only wanted me,” Drew said of his son after the operation.
His son has hip dysplasia, a developmental displacement of the hip joint that occurs in about four of every 1,000 births, according to orthoseek.com, a pediatric orthopedics Web site. Children older than 1 year old with dysplasia often are in a hip cast for up to 3 months following surgery, according to the Web site.
Francona, who Wednesday said only that Drew was away attending to some “pretty extensive surgery” with his son, said the situation weighed on the outfielder.
“Yeah, a ton,” Francona said. “I’ve known about it. You can’t away from it. I know people don’t want to hear about real life, but it happens. You deal with it the best you can and you move on.”
Drew was a late scratch from the Boston’s lineup Thursday but pinch ran in the seventh inning. He entered Friday with four hits in his last 27 at-bats (.148). His batting average had gone from .265 to .247 in the last three weeks, though he did have seven RBIs in his last 11 games.
Francona chose Wily Mo Pena to start for Drew in right field against Horacio Ramirez, partly because Pena entered Friday 4-for-9 with a home run off the left-hander. But the manager said it was also so Drew “could get his feet back under him.”
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