“I stand for everything I do in my life,” he said. “If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’ll admit it. But to put my mom and family through the hurt that I caused them, with the one [arrest] in Aruba, and the one [for drunk driving] in Baltimore. To tell you the truth, if those people were telling me the things they tell my mom, I don’t care. I would laugh. But telling my mom, my sister, my friends and hurting other people close to me — enough’s enough. And you know what? I said that’s over with. I checked myself into rehab.”

Ponson is one of the most complex people I’ve ever met in baseball. I watched him throw another bullpen session today, and he looked good. Pitching coach Rick Anderson thought so, too. Time will tell. Ponson had surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow in October after being released from his third team in two years. He said his elbow now feels the best it’s felt since he was 19. And that’s saying something because he used to throw about 98 mph at that age.

The Twins are hoping new teammates such as Johan Santana and Carlos Silva have a better influence than Ponson’s former teammate with the Orioles, Scott Erickson. Indeed, Ponson seems to be embracing his time with Santana and Silva. But he still defends his good friend, Erickson.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Catch-all. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.