Adrian Beltre just might be the toughest player in baseball. The dude's played through it all — hernias, ailing quads, you name it, he's played through it.
Over the past couple of weeks, all we'd heard about Beltre was how frustrated he was with the slow progress his thumb injury had made since hitting the disabled list on June 1. Beltre's absence severely hampered the Rangers' lineup by taking a feared right-handed bat out of the middle of it and forcing Jeff Banister to break up his lefty-heavy lineup with some weird lineups, including one that had Elvis Andrus hitting third and another that had him hitting fifth.
Finally, Beltre had seen enough, and the Rangers' front office apparently agreed. On Tuesday, Beltre was shockingly activated from the disabled list after taking some batting practice and without any sort of rehab assignment.
Rangers GM Jon Daniels called Beltre a "freak" and said "freaky players do freaky things," before adding the fact that he knew Beltre isn't 100 percent but also knows he can't further injure himself.
“I don’t pretend to think he’s 100 percent, but whether we wait a week or have him go take a few at-bats on rehab, it was going to be there a while,” Daniels told reporters. “He’s not going to further hurt himself, we’ve been told. It’s not a surgery. The doctors say he’s not risking anything. Today, he felt like he took another step forward.”
Beltre immediately stepped back into his cleanup spot in the Rangers order and went 1-for-4 with a run and an RBI. He also made a couple of nice plays at third base despite his sore thumb on his glove hand.
