Bodies are fragile and even the best athletes in the world can fall victim to the normal wear and tear of playing a sport professionally. Sports injuries happen. That’s a fact of life. But when does a specific injury rise above the fray and demand greater attention from fans and sports executives? When it becomes an epidemic.

The Arm: Inside the Billion Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports (Amazon, B&N) by Yahoo baseball columnist Jeff Passan, makes the case that elbow injuries in baseball are indeed an epidemic.

We are now watching baseball in the third week of the season. Although the sample size is small, things are definitely happening. With that in mind, and at the risk of overreacting to 8% of the season, I present to you my first edition of Three Up, Three Down.

Aside from Kyle Schwarber’s torn ACL, the biggest story from baseball’s opening week was Rockies rookie shortstop Trevor Story. Two homers in his big league debut, one more in his 2nd game, another in his 3rd, and two more in his 4th. Then, after a temporary power outage in his 5th game, he hit another homer on Sunday for a grand total of seven home runs in the first six games of his career.

To put those numbers in perspective, 10 MLB teams generated seven home runs or fewer out of their shortstops in all of 2015!

With Story’s historic rookie start in mind, I began thinking about the best rookie seasons of all time. And after a weekend of research, here are my top three.

With Story’s historic rookie start in mind, I began thinking about the best rookie seasons of all time. And after a weekend of research, here are my top three.

Baseball is back! After waiting through an offseason that felt longer than a Steve Trachsel start, baseball fans can rejoice that actual games have started once again.

Even though I do a weekly baseball podcast and follow the sport throughout the offseason, the beginning of the season always seems to surprise me. Not “surprise” in the sense that April 3rd caught me off guard (I mean, we had a countdown page on our website), but more so in my emotional response to baseball being back. At the risk of sounding cheesy, Opening Day reminded me afresh why I love baseball. It’s as if over the course of the long winter I forgot why I love the sport so much.

So, why baseball? Here are three things I'm loving about the game as another season begins.

Recently, as I surveyed the landscape of Major League Baseball, I noticed what I think is a key difference between the good teams and bad teams in 2015 (or any year for that matter). My research began as I tried to understand why my favorite team, the White Sox, continued to flounder.