The Rays hit a speed bump last night when Carlos Pena was pulled from Game 1 after just two innings with blurred vision, but he has his sights on playing tonight. (Get it? "His sights?" Okay, moving on ... ) As Marc Topkin explains in the St. Petersburg Times, Pena suffered the ailment on Wednesday:
Pena was relaxing at home early Wednesday night when he felt something in his left eye and rubbed it. The result, he found out after some extreme pain and an emergency visit to team eye doctor Mark Sibley, was a scratched cornea and some significantly blurred vision.
He initially tried to play through the injury but was worried about making throws. Fortunately, with the help of eye drops, antibiotics and a clear contact, his vision should be back to normal tonight.
In hindsight, it's somewhat amusing how little press Pena's absence received. Evan Longoria provided more than enough firepower to get the job done, but Pena led the team this year with 31 home runs and 102 RBI. Can you imagine the uproar had this happened to Aramis Ramirez or Derrek Lee? There would've been thousands of words in Chicago's newspapers today about how the Cubs are cursed and how even particles of dusts are part of the cosmic conspiracy.
