Not since The Glass Menagerie has there been such a fragile unicorn as Jacoby Ellsbury.
When Amanda's Gentleman Caller dropped the play's centerpiece glass ornament, it was curtains for the character.
Jacoby Ellsbury, the sensational centerpiece of the Red Sox, seems to be a glass animal, dropped in even years. Two years ago, he broke a fistful of ribs when a fellow player crashed into him during his notorious left field experiment.
The result was endless pain and a lost season.
Jacoby has done it again, a return to the ashes.
Not since the first incarnation of the TV show Dallas when we wondered who shot J.R. Ewing has there been such a conundrum as the 2012 season of J.M. Ellsbury.
Thirty-three years after the first Dallas, the original series has returned. We may have to wait as long for another Ellsbury MVP season.
No, an asteroid has not hit Ellsbury. Worse, he hit second base while sliding.
As he rolled into second base in a routine breakup play, he seemed to go down like a bullet meant for actor Larry Hagman's character hit him. The rest, as they say, separates the muscle from the shoulder and the men from the boys.
Ellsbury may be out longer than anyone dares to predict. His rigor seems as ephemeral as the butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Yes, some butterflies can make a journey of a 162 games.
Others meet an ugly end in the neighbor's yard after traveling the distance from first base to second.
Term "ephemeral" describes the jinxed Jacoby. That is a condition that makes something brief in its lifespan.
There are rivers that flow only once per year. There are islands that appear only for a day out of a river.
With another injury seemingly marring the start of another season, Jacoby's career in Boston will be the most ephemeral artifact of his baseball playing days.
Soon he will transport his beautiful form and talent to a warmer clime, like San Diego or Arizona, where he will flourish like the orchid usually pinned on a prom queen.
Like those cacti that bloom with only one flower for a short period, Ellsbury's gestation has now passed for 2012.
In the meantime, he will be observed under glass in a hyperbaric chamber with oxygen therapy, given controlled humidity and temperature to keep him from spoiling.
Some cruel cynics suggest he be sent to a cryogenic center to stay with Ted Williams--not Tennessee Williams, waiting for a better day.
If you missed Jacoby's elegance this spring, you may have to wait till next year for another blossoming. In the meantime, we will once again have TV staple Dallas, back from the dead on TNT this week.
