World's best baseball players also the clumsiest

[Wolfman]

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7825336/World's-best-baseball-players-also-the-clumsiest?MSNHPHCP&GT1=10937#

By Jeff Gordon
Frequent FOXSports.com contributor Jeff Gordon is also an online columnist for STLToday (Gordo's Zone), an Internet branch of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Updated: February 28, 2008, 5:10 PM EST

Houston Astros outfielder Hunter Pence reported to spring training Tuesday with bandages on both hands and both knees, unable to practice for a week.
What happened to him? Well, back at his Kissimmee, Fla., apartment complex, a sliding glass door lurked between his bathroom and the hot tub. And it nailed him. Pence explained how on his blog:


"Despite the assumptions, I wanted to let everyone know that I did not consume any alcohol that evening. I had just come home from dinner with some friends, and decided to jump in the hot tub to loosen up my muscles before bed. As we were walking out to the hot tub, I took about three steps toward the tub (leaving the door open behind me) and decided I needed to use the restroom before hopping into the hot water ... I did not realize that my friend had closed the door behind me.

"Because the ground was cold outside and I was barefoot, I turned around quickly to run inside. As I tried to hop inside from the step, I went straight through the glass door."

Major League Baseball features some of the greatest athletes in the world, but also some of the clumsiest people. Faulty hotel pillows have caused a myriad of injuries. Many ballplayers have lost fights with dugout water coolers. Some have strained their backs putting on socks, shoes or boots. Others suffered the same fate getting out of clubhouse reclining chairs.

In this case, Pence suffered multiple lacerations while joining the large fraternity of ballplayers wounded in freakish accidents. Here is our list of the Top 10 Weirdest Baseball Injuries:


Dangers of Arachnophobia
Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Glenallen Hill suffered toe and elbow cuts along with carpet burns on his knees during a nocturnal bout with arachnophobia in 1990.

"I have a phobia about spiders," Hill told reporters after reporting to work on crutches. "In the nightmare, I was trying to get away from spiders."

It was quite an active nightmare, since he bounced on a wall, broke a glass table and climbed stairs in his semi-conscious state. "When I woke up," Hill said, "I was on a couch and my wife, Mika, was screaming, 'Honey, wake up!'"

Like many of these stories, this seemed unbelievable. But Hill offered to give reporters a tour of his blood-splattered apartment.


Attack of the deadly tarp

St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Vince Coleman was minding his own business on the Busch Stadium field before Game 4 of the 1985 NLCS. A light rain fell. Soon, Coleman fell.

Unprovoked, the electronically operated tarp went after him. It rolled over his left leg and pinned him to the turf. Workers finally freed Coleman, but not before the speedy lead-off hitter suffered a postseason-ending knee injury.

"That tarp was a real man-eater," Coleman later quipped.


Bambi's revenge
Colorado Rockies infielder Clint Barmes did not — repeat, did NOT — break his collarbone riding an all-terrain vehicle during a 2005 trip to Todd Helton's spread.

"I cannot say it strongly enough — he did not get hurt riding an ATV," Helton said. "I was there. He never left my eyesight the entire time."

But Helton did serve Barmes a meal featuring venison during that visit, and he gave him a package of the deer meat to take home. Barmes was lugging that meat back home when he fell on some steps, causing injuries that required surgical repairs.


Price paid for Guitar heroics
When Detroit Tigers reliever Joel Zumaya developed a strained forearm during the 2006 season, the team's medical staff believed his excessive use of the "Guitar Hero" video game caused his problem.


But that diagnosis didn't dissuade Zumaya from rocking on in 2007.

"They had a tough time trying to find out what was wrong with my arm," Zumaya told the Detroit News, "and I told them I was playing this guitar game. I don't believe that's what it was, and to tell you the truth, I haven't stopped playing it. A lot of people have criticized me and told me, 'Joel, put it away.' But I'm still going to play it. Just not as often."

His hobby became a moot point after the 2007 season. Zumaya suffered a shoulder injury moving boxes at his parent's San Diego-area home as wild fires closed on.


Attack of the rogue protective cup
When Cincinnati Reds outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. suffered a lower abdominal strain, he offered a vivid description of the pain. "The best way I can describe it is it felt like somebody bungee jumped off my right (testicle)," Griffey told the Cincinnati Post.

He is an expert on painful nether-region injuries, since he once missed a game with bruised man fruit — caused by his protective cup pinching him during the fray.

Griffey is no stranger to odd injuries. He once suffered a broken hand while wrestling with his young children. On his yacht. In the Bahamas.


The perils of frostbite
When Rickey Henderson wanted out of Oakland in 1993, the A's traded him to the Great White North. There, he developed a case of frostbite.

But the damage occurred indoors, after Henderson fell asleep while wearing an ice pack. That forced him to miss three games at Fenway Park in August.


He-Man? No, he hurt
Milwaukee Brewers hurler Steve Sparks seemed poised to make the club in 1994. But then he attended a spring training motivational seminar. One of the visuals was a guy ripping phone books in half.

Of course, there is a trick to doing that. Sparks didn't know the trick. So when he attempted to tear a phone book in half himself, he tried to outmuscle the unwieldy object ... and dislocated his non-pitching shoulder in the process.


Attack of the airline food

Violent vomiting can do bad things to the human body. Just ask Tom Glavine, who broke a rib while pitching for the Atlanta Braves.

Actually, he broke the rib while throwing up bad airline food. But good soldier that he is, he pitched on with the help of a pain-killing injection.

"Looking back, though, I don't know how smart it was but it got me through the game," Glavine said. "When I had the broken rib, it would knock me to my knees."

(By the way, John Smoltz, Glavine's long-time running mate, makes a lot of these top 10 lists for allegedly burning his chest while ironing a shirt while wearing it. He insists that never happened. "Ironing my shirt while it was on — that's the most absurd thing," Smoltz said in 1996. "It was made up. But it got on Arsenio Hall, CNN, everywhere. And what do you do to stop it?")


Attack of the microwaved doughnut
Like Glavine, outfielder Kevin Mitchell once got hurt while vomiting. Also, he accidentally put rubbing alcohol in his eye instead of eyewash. Supposedly he once missed a game with a strained eyelid, too.

But his most interesting injury came in 1990, when he showed up four days late for the San Francisco Giants spring training after needing emergency root canal surgery.

He put a frozen doughnut into a microwave oven and overcooked it — turning the breakfast treat into a lethal weapon.


The terror of too-sharp tongs

Big league ballplayers have stabbed and sliced themselves a variety of ways. It is traditional in our national pastime, like the seventh-inning stretch.

San Diego Padres pitcher Adam Eaton once jabbed himself in the stomach while using a knife to open a pesky DVD wrapper. Texas Rangers outfielder Oddibe McDowell sliced his hand while buttering a roll at the team's annual welcome luncheon.

These things happen. But the Brewers didn't expect to lose reliever Matt Wise in 2006 after he sliced his right middle finger on a part of salad tongs in the Kansas City clubhouse.

"At least it was something in my weight class," the wiry Wise told MLB.com.


Runner's up
Byron McLaughlin (hit hotel room mirror while practicing windup), Brian Anderson (burned his cheek in a hotel room while determining his iron was hot), A.J. Burnett (burned his pitching hand while ironing jeans), Mark Smith (stuck hand into a faulty air conditioner), Coco Crisp (hit by a reckless driver, Mariner Moose), Terry Mulholland (struck in the eye by hotel pillow feather), Dwight Gooden (struck in the face with golf club, swung by teammate Vince Coleman), Sammy Sosa (violent sneezing), Jeff Juden (infected tattoo), Brett Barberie (chili juice in his eye), Greg Harris (strained elbow, from flipping sunflower seeds in the bullpen), Marty Cordova (tanning lamp tragedy), Rich Harden (strained shoulder turning off his alarm clock), Kent Hrbek (sprained ankle while wrestling clubhouse attendant), Nolan Ryan (coyote bite), George Brett (broke a toe on a chair while running to the living room to see baseball on TV).