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Nixon injured during BB game, cancels St. Louis stop

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 14, 2009 - Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is on crutches this morning -- and won't be in St. Louis for a news conference on economic issues -- because he tore his calf muscle during a basketball pick-up game.

Honest.

Nixon, 53 and with knee surgeries in his past, may finally have to give up his beloved game. He did pretty well last month in the senior division at Mizzou's "Show Me Games," garnering 60 percent of his shots from the foul line. He'd just returned from a visit to the Middle East. 

According to the official announcement from his office this morning, the Democratic governor "will be unable to travel to St. Louis today because of a torn calf muscle. The Governor injured his leg Wednesday evening while playing a pick-up basketball game at his church in Jefferson City.

"Gov. Nixon is undergoing treatment for the injury and is walking with the aid of crutches today,'' the statement added.

The news conference is still on tap in Manchester. But it will be headlined by state Economic Director Linda Martinez, who had been slated to accompany the governor.

In the meantime, maybe the governor will be able to relax and read up on his latest favorable poll numbers. (SurveyUSA) Apparently, that e.coli flap at Lake of the Ozarks has yet to become a major issue among the public.

Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.