Strange injuries happen in every sport. Kevin Love once broke his hand by doing knuckle pushups. There’s a common meme showing a soccer player getting carted off with a bad Kung Fu chokehold. But even these pale in comparison to some of the injuries baseball players get.
Over the weekend Oakland Athletics pitcher Jesus Luzardo broke his pinkie playing a video game. The report came out that he was playing a video game and bumped his hand on the desk he was playing at, got his hand checked out and turns out his pinkie had a hairline fracture. I have no idea how this is possible unless he plays video games like I did when I was a kid thinking moving he controller would help Mario jump over a gap. But let’s not focus on that, it’s just another injury in a long line of goofy baseball injuries.
For a game that calls players iron man for being able to play day in and day out, there sure are a lot of silly injuries that cause players to miss games. Blisters are a common injury for pitchers, I get it, pitchers need to have full control on the grip and feel of the ball. But for someone who handles and plays with the same (style) ball hundreds of times a day you’d think calluses would be built up to prevent blisters. Worst case, they should just take a page out of the hockey injury book and call it an upper body injury or a hand injury. Don’t be so honest, it just sounds bad.
Finger injuries happen all too much in baseball – again I get it you need to have working fingers to be able to control a ball when you’re throwing it, especially as a pitcher. MLB.com just came out with a list of silly injuries that have happened – Zach Wheeler injured his finger pulling up his pants, Jose Quintana needed stitches after doing the dishes, Hunter Strickland broke his nose lifting weights, Carlos Carrera broke some ribs getting a massage. Why do the saddest injury stories always come from baseball players?
For a game that you have a hard ball fly at you at speeds over 100 mph on offense and defense – you’re encouraged to “take one for the team” when at bat and to get your body in front of the ball when a hard grounder comes your way – the injury reports sometimes are comical. Bryce Harper took a ball to the face just last week and came back three days later. A worthy reason to miss games. But breaking a finger playing a video game? That’s something a grown man and elite athlete shouldn’t have happen. I get it, flukes happen, but in baseball it’s almost the norm.