Downed by drone joins oddball ledger
At least Trevor Bauer didn’t injure his digit picking his nose.
That would not necessarily be a first, either. Because baseball players have found all manner of kooky ways to come up lame.
Bauer was sufficiently in the pink (y) to start Game 3 for Cleveland Monday night. He lasted less than an inning, at which point the baby finger on his pitching hand began gushing blood, dripping onto his pantaloons, his jersey, shoes. Though nobody from inside the Indians clubhouse seemed to notice or they were pretending not to notice — until Toronto manager John Gibbons emerged to tap home-plate umpire Brian Gorman on the shoulder. Uh, starter bleeding out. And away he went, hand cupped to his side, stricken look on his face. Twenty-one pitches and the stitches had come unravelled. Baseball rules forbid pitchers from having any foreign substance on their hands — including a bandage.
The self-proclaimed “big nerd” missed his regularly scheduled turn on the weekend, unable to throw because of 10 stitches knitting together the gash on his pinky. Bauer, who designs and builds toy drones, had been tinkering with one of his babies when he suffered the gouge, just before the Indians opened their American League Championship Series with Toronto.
Dronie Dearest wasn’t to blame for the owie, Bauer insisted.
On the off-day Sunday, Bauer even brought a show-and-tell model — my little “friend” — to his press conference, describing their “relationship” as “basically like a good marriage, right? We fight all the time, beat each other up . . .’’ Then hastily rephrased: “That could get taken out of context. I definitely don’t endorse that.”
But the pesky drone that took down Bauer on Monday night — two-thirds of an inning, two weeks, one strikeout — is a recurring motif in the pleasant young man’s life. Earlier this year he tweeted: “Sooooo . . . suggestions on getting your drone out of a tree? It’s tucked in the branches about 60 feet up at the top of a large tree.” Presumably Bauer didn’t fall on his head whilst trying to retrieve the damn thing. Although that would be keeping with the bizarre aches and ailments absorbed by ballists merely going about their day-to-day lives.
This is the post-season year where Joaquin Benoit tore a calf muscle charging in from the bullpen to join a dugouts-clearing melee. And Russell Martin needed stitches to patch up the finger split open during high-five celebrations after Toronto won the wild-card game.
Ballplayers, who must be made of spun sugar and gold filigree — relative to other professional athletes — are all the time finding weird ways to get triaged off the roster.
Last summer, then-Cleveland infielder Chris Johnson missed two games due to an infected spider bite. The arachnid had attacked Johnson whilst he slept in his hotel room. Spiders — at least imaginary ones, in a nightmare — caused Jays outfielder Glenallen Hill to fall out of bed and crash through a glass table.
At spring training a couple of years ago, Kevin Pillar let rip a huge ACHOO!!!! and pulled his oblique muscle. Yet on the field, Superman has never suffered significant injury climbing the wall or diving headfirst to make a spectacular catch.
Sammy Sosa likewise threw out his back sneezing.
Over the years, I’ve kept a file of Ripley’s believe-it-or-not incidents involving ballplayers.
There was the time pitcher Todd Stottlemyre impaled his finger on a fish hook — which was at the time affixed to his fishing hat. Fred McGriff burned his hand ironing a shirt. Goose Gossage sliced his finger eating a lobster.
Nolan Ryan had to get rabies shots because he was bitten by a baby coyote. David Cone was bitten by his mother-in-law’s dog. Fireballing reliever Joel Zumaya missed three games with a wrist inflammation caused by playing Guitar Hero.
Chris Loghlan suffered a torn meniscus after planting a pie in the face of a teammate who’d just hit a game-winning single. Luke Scott pulled a hamstring doing his homerun trot. Kendrys Morales broke his leg whooping up a grand slam.
According to my collection of arcana, a Cleveland pitcher once pulled his groin muscle while sitting in front of the TV and crossing his legs. There was the guy who punctured his eardrum with a Q-tip and another fellow who set his beard on fire lighting a cigarette. And the outfielder who scorched his face in a tanning bed. On the other end of the temperature spectrum, Rickey Henderson, while a Blue Jay, fell asleep with an ice pack on his foot. Sidelined with frostbite.
Jim Palmer pinched a nerve in his neck looking over to check the runner at first base. Wage Boggs bruised his ribs removing his cowboy boots. Jimmy Hairston, a Chicago White Sox back in the day, pulled a back muscle reaching up to adjust his ball cap. Ken Griffey Jr. got his testicle painfully pinched by his protective cup. The temperamental Dave Kingman injured his knee — and missed 11 games — swiveling in the batter’s box to argue a call with the umpire.
Huck Flener was a rookie pitcher headed for Jays spring training. Opened the overhead compartment on the plane, briefcase comes flying out and clipped him on the collarbone. All right. I’ll stop now. Aw, just one more, although this might be more baseball lore than fact, reaching all the way back to 1923. Red Sox rookie pitcher Clarence Blethen thought he looked meaner without his false teeth when he was on the mound. On one occasion, he neglected to put them back in his mouth while batting, tucked them into his back pocket instead.
Blethen lined a double — the only time in seven years of major league ball that he got on base — and slid into second. A chunk of his posterior was chomped off by his own dentures. Blethen was removed from the game for “excessive bleeding.”
So many ways this game can bite you in the arse.