All Snelling wants is a chance to play baseball with two healthy knees, two sturdy ankles, a couple of pain-free wrists and everything else that has comprised the long list of the injuries he has suffered since 2000.

"I'll go 0-for-50 right now if somebody told me I had a healthy knee," he said. "I'd go 0-for-400 for a whole year. Well, maybe not a whole year, but I'll take 0-for-50."

With Snelling, 0-for-two games hardly happens. The problem, of course, is that playing two games in a row has been rare. Snelling is as scarred as a veteran, yet he's just 24.

"I've spent more time in the Peoria training room than I have on any baseball field," he said. "I think they've named the training table for me."

He played a healthy first pro season with the Everett AquaSox in 1999, but since then he has suffered hand, wrist, knee and ankle injuries. In January, he had nasal surgery to remove a septum because an examination revealed he had two.

Like so many other injuries, Snelling had just gotten himself healthy last August when he took a swing in a game at Safeco Field and, of all things, tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

"I remember being in the training room getting taped and I said, 'My knee feels great today.' I don't think I'd said that the whole year," he said. "Then I did it hitting. How does that happen? I'd never heard of anybody tearing an ACL hitting."

He had surgery in September to repair the damage and has spent almost six months recovering from an injury that typically takes seven months to heal. He hopes to be playing games by the end of spring training.

Every year since 2001, the Mariners and their minor league clubs have left in April to begin their regular-season schedules, leaving Snelling behind to rehab.

"In 2002 I broke my thumb playing a spring training game, '03 I was rehabbing my knee, '04 I break my hand on the first swing of spring training after I'd swung for three months straight in the whole offseason," he said. "The first swing of spring training I break my hand? Like, how does that happen?"

"If I did that, I'm going to be a bitter man," he said. "I try to look at it as a challenge and tell myself that I've been tested again and I've got to do what I've got to do. I could either quit or rehab. There's no in-between."

The Mariners had long dreamed that Snelling, with that quick left-handed swing, could fill a longterm void in left field. Instead, as his injuries piled up, the team moved on, as if to indicate that any contribution Snelling provides would be merely a bonus.

"My first ACL rehab took 14, 15 months and it was painful," he said. "Stuff didn't feel right and they kept having to clean it out. This last one was like, 'I don't think I can do it again. I don't want to sit out another 16 months.' "

This was a better injury to have, at least on the scale of what Snelling has experienced over the years. The recovery time was expected to be half what he'd endured before.

As badly as he wants to play again, Snelling knows he can't progress any faster than his body will allow. He's currently working out two days, taking a day off, then working out two more days. Eventually it'll be three on and one off until he can work out daily without swelling or soreness.

"I almost feel lazy," he said. "If I say, 'I'm going to take the day off,' to me that's being lazy. But I think I have to do that a little more."

"Hitters, especially big-league hitters - and I'm not saying that I'm a big-league hitter - they don't have to tell themselves that," he said. "I don't think I've ever worried that, 'Oh my God, is my swing gone? Can I still play baseball?' My worries are, 'Am I going to be able to run?' "

Snelling reports to work every day like all the other Mariners. He has a locker in the major league clubhouse, plays cards with his buddies and, when he practices, he's on the field with the other outfielders.

"I think what's frustrating the most is not being a part of anything," he said. "I'm pretty much the only guy who's a long-term rehabber this spring training. You're pretty much forgotten when you're on the training table, and I understand that.

He still has his humor, although it's not as prevalent around reporters who've found joy over the years listening to him talk about childhood mishaps, his "Mum" in Australia and his bulldog Barnold, who once ate a Costco-sized container of Jolly Rancher candy.

"One of the things I've always been able to do every day in the four years I've been down here rehabbing, or however long it's been, as soon as I leave the training room, I don't think about my knee," he said. "I keep myself occupied. I play with the dogs. I haven't done much, other than stay at my house and come to the field."

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