Unless you’re an athlete. Because if you are an athlete, sports fans – fickle ones, at that – make it their own pastime to comment about your bad day, remind you about your bad day, and hold it over your head for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes on end.

Heaven forbid said bad day occurs due to an injury. Then you’re “injury prone,” “weak,” “not a professional,” “disingenuous.” Injury equals weakness, and unless the limb is severed, many believe you ought to be out on the field, ice, court, or pitch.

Jason Bay is having a bad week. Maybe a bad month. (Photo: Flickr user lifes ill)

One could say that Boston Red Sox’s outfielder Jason Bay is having a bad week. Maybe a month. After he pulled a hamstring this past weekend, he had to sit out two games. Nevermind that Bay was the last Sox player to take a day off since the All-Star Game. Nevermind that the last day he had off was when he was hit by a pitch around Memorial Day. Bay suffered from a bum hamstring, and Sox fans took to the Boston.com comments labeling the guy as a “bust,” as “lazy,” as being not worth the money he allegedly is asking in a new contract.

Bay came back for Wednesday evening’s game against Tampa Bay (the 2009 home of everyone’s favorite Californian Jewish Outfielder, and your June interleague play run leader, Gabe Kapler), and tweaked the hamstring again. Hamstrings are a fickle part of your body. Any athlete will tell you that. You can aggravate it running sideways, in the beginning of a vertical jump, on the landing of a leap – all routine parts of an outfielder’s game. It shouldn’t be a great surprise that maybe Bay shouldn’t have played Wednesday. He most likely felt fine on Tuesday, and then in the routine movements of playing his position on Wednesday, felt the injury again. That happens. Heck, as a teenager, my permanently wrecked knees felt great when I wasn’t throwing roundoffs or doing my ballet bar exercises. And then I would do such things, and holy heck, I thought someone was splitting my knee open like one would take a cleaver to an avocado pit and eating the bone alive. But you wouldn’t know if you would feel the pain until you tried physical activity.

No tears were shed for former fan favorite Bay in the comments section of Boston.com. One of the first commenters to the report about his hamstring re-aggravation claimed that, “Star players step up,” and accused Bay of being lazy, and that he ought to get out there and play like a professional. Others followed the negative suit, saying that he isn’t worth the money he might get in a new contract, that he’s been nothing but a disappointment, and that he ought to be replaced by farm system players. One commenter even went as far to describe Bay as “injury prone” throughout his career – Bay, of course, being the guy who played all 162 games in 2005, 159 in 2006, 145 in 2007, and 155 in 2008. If that’s injury prone, I would hate to see that commenter describe JD Drew or Carl Pavano.

Bay had been out 2 games as of Thursday morning. He had been out maybe 4 games all season.

I know most newspaper commenters exaggerate in their comments. That the majority of commenters don’t think before they type. But listen to sports radio. Read blogs. The commenters are just joining in the negative fray of those contributors. How disingenuous is a fan that their first thought upon the injury of a player on their team is that the player is lazy or undeserving of a chance to heal? Bay isn’t the first one to be held to the impossible standard possessed by sports fans, and he won’t be the last. Athletes may be paid for their physical ability, but they shouldn’t be put down and used for glue the minute they suffer a muscle pull. Sports fans ought to lose the barbarian-ness and reestablish their humanism.

Because, after all, I don’t see strangers publicly criticizing stenographers suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome who need to take a day off, or a lunch lady for missing work because she’s sick from caught-from-first-graders flu.

• the start of football season
• the pennant race
• NHL and AHL training camps
• and, most importantly, the countdown to college hockey season. (T minus 8 days, if you are a Boston University men’s hockey fan, and if you follow the women’s team, 2 days.)

Those aspects alone make this time of year one of my favorites.  It’s all sports, all the time.  I can’t complain.

In addition to these general reasons why late September is wonderful, here are four things making this week better than most:

Steve Young's already in Canton, now he'll have his #8 retired by the 49ers.

Steve Young is getting his number retired by the San Francisco 49ers on October 5th. – In their game against the Patriots, the 49ers will retire Young’s #8 in a halftime ceremony. Because it’s against the Pats, Bostonian-me might actually get to see a snippet or two of it!  Now let’s hope JT O’Sullivan can make like Young and crush the Patriots that day.

Jason Bay Gets To Play Baseball in October, Seems Dazed and Confused - I was at Fenway Park when the Red Sox clinched their fifth playoff berth in six years on Tuesday evening.  Jason Bay, despite botching a few plays earlier in the evening (which I attribute to him having a newborn at home and for having played like every game this season, be it be for the Sox or Pirates), batted in the winning run for the Sox.  During the post-game celebrations, he was seen carrying around a case of Bud Light in a daze on the field.  It was amusing – I couldn’t get a great picture of it, but at one point they showed him on the Jumbotron just with this half-awake smile on his face.  You gotta love that the number of Bay shirts at Sox games has increased a hundred fold in between the game I went to on September 9 and Tuesday.

Also of note is Will Leitch’s great column for WEEI.com last week about Jason Bay – I choked on my coffee reading it, it was so amusing.  Choking = I highly recommend it.

Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Started His First NHL Game – John Curry, aka “Everyone’s Favorite Goalie” (unless you think Cory Schneider was better…which I don’t), was in goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins on Monday evening’s preseason game against the John Tortorella-less Tampa Bay Lightning (eh, Barry Melrose is full of mullet-y goodness, but as a Rochester girl, I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Tortorella.) He stopped all 15 shots he faced, after he entered the game for Dany Sarbourin, in a 3-2 Penguins win.  Sarbourin then went on to play a full game on Wednesday against the Leafs, where he let up two late goals, but the Penguins still pulled out a win.  Marc-Andre Fleury and Sarbourin haven’t been incredible (one might argue Sarbourin’s never been), and Curry hasn’t been sent down to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s camp yet.  According to the best AHL blog out there, Penguins’ Insider, the Penguins may bring Curry to Sweeden for their upcoming games there.

Listen, Pittsburgh – if you want a boost in merchandise sales, keep Curry in the big leagues, start selling his jersey, and find a way to get about 500 up to Boston.  I promise you’ll have no problem selling them out.

Happy, happy Bills fans. (Buffalobills.com)

The Bills Are 3-0, May Be Getting Media Love - Although my former idol Peter King chooses to ignore them (anyone else see the lame apology at the end of King’s Monday Morning Quarterback – Tuesday Edition for not mentioning the Bills, even mentioning that he had material to write about from an interview he did Sunday night with Trent Edwards?), the Bills are 3-0 after their heart-attack inducing win over the incomprehensible Oakland Raiders.  ESPN has begun to give them love – at least three Bills stories this week! – and Don Banks of Sports Illustrated devoted a substantial part of his Tuesday column to them.  The one beef I still have is with Tiki “I Was Never Really That Good At Rushing the Ball, Just Good At Making a Bigger Deal of Myself than Actually Necessary” Barber on his remark during NBC’s Football Night in America show on Sunday.  After a recap of the Bills – Raiders game, the floor was thrown over to Barber, Cris Collinsworth, and Jerome Bettis.  Barber said that the real story of the day had been “not the Bills, but the Raiders, and how well they played that football game.”

Umm…the Raiders let the Bills run over them in the second half and couldn’t stop two crucial Bills scoring drives in the fourth quarter.  I know the Bills weren’t impressive, but the Raiders were worse.  Does Tiki have friends on the Raiders or something? Maybe he was too busy judging on Project Runway to actually watch the game on Sunday afternoon.

I’m calling it now – there will be a Broncos – Bills playoff game.  And it’ll be awesome.   Just you wait.

That is, until this afternoon, when Manny Ramirez was involved in a three-way trade for everyone’s favorite Canadian baseball player.

Jason Bay, welcome to the Red Sox. I finally have another hottie outfielder to drool over. And, did I mention that he’s CANADIAN?!

Yes, I knew of Bay’s existence before today. It’s been a running joke between my boyfriend and those in my fantasy baseball league for a good two years that Bay is my second favorite baseball player solely based on the fact that he is Canadian. (In case you haven’t noticed from knowing me/reading previous entries, I’m obsessed with Canadian things. All born-and-bred Western New Yorkers are.) Never mind the fact that he’s not too shabby of an actual baseball player – 22 home runs already this year – what really matters is that he’s Canadian and somewhat pleasing on the eyes.

Times like these I am happy I work a few blocks away from Fenway Park, because I will be traveling down there early next week to procure a Jason Bay Red Sox shirt. It’s a rare occasion when a player you like ends up going to the team you root for – for example, the only time Steve Young was ever in a Bills uniform is whenever I use the “create a player” feature on older versions of Madden, and Hot Forward Who Cannot Be Named will probably never play for the Sabres, Bruins or Amerks. Therefore I’m going to milk this Bay-to-the-Sox for all its worth. He’s hot, he’s good, and he’s Canadian – what else do you want?!