Get well soon, Joey

As mentioned in the recaps this morning, Joey Votto continues to suffer from dizziness. Also mentioned was Nick Esasky, the former Reds and Red Sox' first basemen who, almost immediately after signing a big free agent contract with Atlanta in 1990 began suffering from dizziness as well, which was subsequently diagnosed as Vertigo and ended his baseball career. I hadn't seen it when I posted this morning, but last night tHeMARksMiTh did a writeup of Esasky's sad tale over at Way Back and Gone:

By the end of Spring Training, Esasky began to feel weak and tired, but everyone figured it was the flu. After he laced two hits in his debut, it seemed he would be okay. Then, he struck out 14 times in 35 at-bats. Then, he committed 5 errors (a lot for even him). Objects and the world in which they existed began moving and appearing differently. Nine games later, he told Bobby Cox that there was a problem.

Over the next 6 months, he went to over 30 doctors and specialists, but few could offer him any explanations. After a while, he told the doctors to stop looking for the cause and just fix him. In July, a doctor told him he had Lyme Disease, but that didn't make anything better. A month later, the Mayo Clinic tried and failed to find anything wrong. Upset and frustrated, Esasky just tried to deal with it.

There's more there, so I highly recommend checking out the whole post.

Unlike Easasky, Votto was playing at the highest of levels when the symptoms knocked him out of the lineup and doctors were called in. My hope for Votto is that this constitutes evidence that whatever is ailing him is not as serious as that which ended Esasky's career and that he's back in the Reds' lineup very very soon.