You Don't Make Friends With Salad And Other Lessons Learned From Injured Athletes

Ian Snell will have more time on his hands to kiss random blonds at bars in Seattle since he won't be making his scheduled start Tuesday night. It's not a sore elbow or tendonitis that will keep Snell from his appointed rounds but a chicken breast. Snell, the Pirates ERA leader, will be out of the lineup after burning his finger while preparing some poultry to top a salad. It's not that serious, he'll start Saturday in Anaheim instead, and the biggest casualty seems to have been Snell's dinner. "I'm all right, but the salad wasn't too good," he reported.

Strangely Snell isn't the first NL Central hurler to run into trouble with a salad. Matt Wise, a reliever with the Brewers, cut his finger on a pair of salad tongs last year and was forced to miss a few games while he recovered. Of course Wise also slammed his head into a dugout overhang this weekend after leaving a game so maybe he's just a klutz and we shouldn't go around blaming salad for keeping our nation's fine athletes from doing their jobs.

Snell's injury got us thinking about some of the stranger injuries that have cost pro athletes time on the field. Our personal favorites are Glenallen Hill's nightmarish nightmare and Charlie Hudson's firearm mishap. Hill suffers from arachnophobia and had a nightmare about spiders that landed him on the DL while he was with Toronto. He sleepwalked his way into a glass table and down a flight of stairs causing lacerations all over his body and, we're assuming, a difficult time when he returned to the clubhouse to face his teammates.

Hudson's might be even stranger. A lefty knuckleballer with the Texas Rangers in their infancy, once shot himself in the finger while cleaning a .38 revolver. Mike Shropshire's excellent Seasons In Hell about those teams has the story.

"It's just one of those accidents that hunters and gun enthusiasts have from time to time," Charlie explained while showing off his bandage. "I was cleaning my .38 revolver and the thing went off." Nobody bothered to ask Charlie exactly what type creatures he liked to hunt with a .38 revolver just as nobody questioned the wisdom, whether intentional or not, of his accident.

They aren't alone on the list, though.

• Brewers pitcher Steve Sparks dislocated his shoulder while trying to tear a telephone book in half.
• Cecil Upshaw ruined a promising career with the Braves in the late 60's when he tore up the nerves in his ring finger while demonstrating dunks on the awning outside a restaurant.
• Clint Barmes of the Rockies ruined an excellent start to his career when he fell and broke his collarbone while trying to carry deer meat up the stairs to his apartment. 
• Vince Coleman got rolled up by a tarp during the 1985 NLCS and missed the World Series which St. Louis lost to Kansas City in seven games.
• Wade Boggs proved that only cowboys should wear cowboy boots when he strained his back pulling them on and missed a week of play.
• Adam Eaton may have been channeling Hudson when he stabbed himself in the stomach while trying to open a DVD package.
• Marty Cordova let vanity get the best of him when he fell asleep in a tanning bed and was forced to miss time with a bad sunburn.
• Rick Honeycutt didn't miss time because he slashed his head with a tack taped to his finger while pitching but he did get suspended for having the tack there in the first place.

Baseball players seem to dominate this list but they aren't the only athletes to injure themselves in goofy ways.

• Darren Barnard, a English footballer, slipped on a puddle of dog piss and injured knee ligaments badly enough to cost him five months.
• The Wikipedia entry for Lionel Simmons says that his career was shortened "due to chronic injuries". What it doesn't say is that one of those injuries was wrist tendonitis brought on by excessive use of a Gameboy.
• Swiss soccer player Paulo Diogo was engaged in a typically overwrought goal celebration when he jumped up on a metal fence in 2004. He didn't notice that his wedding ring snagged the fence and when he jumped down his finger remained attached to the barrier. It couldn't be reattached and Diogo picked up a yellow card for excessive exuberance.
• Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte didn't lose his head when he butted it against a wall in celebration of a touchdown. He did concuss himself, however, and had to take a trip to the hospital.
• Jaguar coach Jack Del Rio thought that a tree stump with axe was the perfect way to illustrate his motto of "keep chopping wood" during a losing streak in 2003. It backfired when punter Chris Hanson drove the axe into his leg during some locker room tomfoolery. That makes Hanson a two-time loser as he also suffered first and second degree burns after a fondue party got out of control in 2002.
• Former hockey goaltender Glenn Healy is also an accomplished bagpiper. He's not an accomplished bagpipe technician, however, and once suffered a deep gash on his hand while changing the bag on his pipes.
• Few athletes spend their downtime playing the bagpipes, even fewer spend that time playing Scrabble. Lionel Letizi, a French soccer player, proved that it wasn't a good idea when he threw his back out while reaching for a dropped tile.
• LaRon Landry was a recent addition to this list when he missed the Redskins minicamp after he took a paintball to the groin.
• And perhaps the only person on this list who will give you pause before having a laugh at their bad luck is Mistar. An Indonesian soccer star, Mistar was killed by a stampede of pigs who rampaged across his team's training session in 1995.

(Picture courtesy of On The DL)

Comments

[extrapolater]

Man, those were great!

[Blake]

It's amazing how many stupid ways you can injure yourself....the least they could have done is made up a good story.

[Hail]

Don't forget Bobby Ojeda. From wikipedia:
...He pitched well in 1988 but was involved in what some consider one of the most ridiculous accidents in baseball history when he severed the tip of his left middle finger while trimming his hedges in mid-September.

[D]

My favorite/frustrating was Joel Zumaya missing playoff time from playing too much guitar hero.

[j-dog]

Don't forget future Hall-of-Famer John Smoltz, ironing his shirt while he happened to be wearing it.

[Rip Slagcheek]

"At the end of the 2001 season, Cardinals catcher Mike Matheny severed tendons in his thumb while sheathing a hunting knife that his wife had given him for his birthday. The injury knocked Matheny off the Cardinals' playoff roster and threatened his career."

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20020626/ai_n10782264

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