#1: Late season injuries. Major League Baseball consists of 162 games, played six games a week. That makes for a Petri dish for injuries. After the halfway point in the season, you see lots of injuries, such as torn rotator cuffs (in the shoulders of pitchers) pulled hamstrings and groin muscles, torn Achilles tendons, jammed and sprained fingers and toes. These are so common that usually your local paper list who is on the DL or disabled list.
#2: Outfielders Crashing into the Back Wall. This is as close to NASCAR as baseball ever wants to get. You know those spectacular plays where the center fielder goes back, back, back, and almost seems to climb up the back wall and reach over the fence and pluck out the ball from the other side to rob the batter of a spectacular home run? Well, sometimes they miss. Not exactly. You never really miss the wall. But fielders may lose track of where they are and crash against that back wall. Ballparks have a warning track to give some notice that the wall is approaching and the walls are padded, but if you are chasing a ball running as fast as you can, colliding with the back wall at Wrigley Field, even with those nice old vines to soften the blow, it’s gonna hurt.
Weirdest crash into the back wall was in the Fourth of July series between Yankees and Red Sox where Johnny Damon goes flying into the wall and hurt himself. Watch the ball hit by Kevin Youklis balancing on the top of the wall for a second or two before falling back into play. http://whatsthe401.com/2008/07/04/sports/johnny-damon-near-catch-ball-sits-on-wall/
#3: Outfielders Crashing into Each Other. Players are supposed to call for the ball so they don’t run into each other, but sometimes they don’t hear each other. You can almost hear the crack of foreheads when this happens. The worst crash had to be back in 2005 when New York Mets outfielders Carlos Beltran and Mike Cameron collided while diving for a ball last night, breaking Cameron's nose and fracturing his cheekbones. http://www.guzer.com/videos/baseball_crash.php
#4: Spectators Getting Hit by Baseballs. You know about this one --- its the Catch Yourself a Souvenir Foul Ball Syndrome. But seriously, people can get hurt. Bats and balls flying into the crowd is a hot topic these days and it may not be too long before nets and see through walls and star wars defense cover takes place. And one of the thing that is really pushing this topic is…
#5: Spectators getting hit by broken bats. Softball is played with aluminum bats, but
major league baseball is played with wooden bats. A bat is truly a thing of beauty, but it is mortal. Being pounded into the path of a 100 mph fastball, they sometimes break. Bats mostly break at the thinnest part of the wood, so that fat piece goes flying unfortunately like a Ethiopian spear and becomes as deadly as that weapon as well.You don’t need to tell Susan Rhodes that. The poor girlfriend went on a date to her first Major League Baseball game and got hit in the mouth by an airborne broken baseball bat on April 25 of this year. That is why there is a big controversy in the MLB about maple vs. ash bats and the tendency of maple bats to shatter more dangerously.
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-bats052908&prov=yhoo&type=lgns
#6: Players and coaches getting hit by baseballs and bats. The catcher is crouching underneath a swinging bat and on rare occasion, that ball slam into his protective face mask. It’s an engineering feat of wonder, that mask is, but your head has still got to take a beating. Umpires have gotten it pretty square on the face, hand or chest as well. That’s why they look so big on tv, they are padded up something fierce. But getting hit by a screaming baseball can be serious. Mike Coolbaugh of the Colorado Rockies, was struck in the head with a line drive last year and died from the injury. MLB then passed the rule requiring the third and first base coaches to wear helmets. And broken bats can be a real danger to folks on the field. Umpire Brian O’Nora got hit in the head with a broken bat at a Kansas City Royals game.
http://www.myfoxkc.com/myfox/MyFox/pages/sidebar_video.jsp?contentId=6846259&version=1&locale=EN-US
#7: Sliding into plate. There are stories about long ago ballplayer Ty Cobb who was rumored to have sharpened his spikes in order to discourage any baseman from blocking his way. When a runner slides, and it appears he will be out, sometimes he will aim his slide toward the legs of the baseman in order to throw him "off balance." ( Let’s be honest, he is trying to take out the baseman so he can’t
make the double play.) In the same vein, sometimes the baseman will stand in front of the plate and block the slide. The catcher is notorious for this because a runner sliding into home plate can lose the game for your team. But it is not going to be pretty. This happened just recently in an August 6 game between Texas and New York. David Murphy of the Texas Rangers and Ivan Rodirguez of New York Yankees knocked each other out just a couple weeks ago and trust me, even with all that protective gear that Pudge was wearing, he was hurting! #8: Hitting the batter. You’ve heard a little bit about this already,(See A Gang of Thieves and Assassins) but hitting the batter can be both intentional and accidental. Sometimes the pitcher just loses control. Other times (like between Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees and Kevin Youklis of the Red Sox), there’s just bad blood. A baseball can give you a pretty bad circular bruise on your shin, or it can really zing you bad on your funny bone, or it can take away about fifty IQ points if it beans you in the head.
#9: Pitcher getting hit by a baseball. The pitcher throws a ball and hopes that if the batter hits it, that it doesn’t straight back at him. It can be a good thing if the pitcher has fast enough reflexes to catch it, but woe is him if it comes back and hits him in the foot or the leg or in the head. Owners and managers also hate to see their million dollar starter with thousand dollar fingers reach out reflexively with a bare hand to catch a ball sailing by him. That's why God made second basemen.
#10: Batters Charging the Mound/ Team Fights. The 1970s seem to be much worse for both benches clearing to defend their honor, but you don’t see as many fights any more. But here is a video of the top ten charges at the mound. Number one is from a game played near the end of Nolan Ryan’s career (one of the best pitchers ever in the game) where Robin Ventura, thinking that Ryan had intentionally hit him, charged the plate. A million baby boomers cheered as Ryan got the kid in a headlock and repeatedly punched him. Not cheering because of the punching, but because the “old” man still had it in him.
http://ballhype.com/video/nolan_ryan_vs_robin_ventura_1993/
And I’m adding in the "Coco Crisp Charging the Mound" video because it seemed to be the most talked about incident so far this summer, hair pulling and eye poking aside.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ywYMKQdxu0
Here in Alaska, we have another entry for blood and guts.
#11: Things Falling From the Sky. Not only do you have to keep your eyes on the ball, you have to keep your eyes on the sky. In 2003, during an Anchorage Bucs/ Fairbanks Goldpanners Game in Anchorage, a Cessna 207 carrying four people crashed onto a ball field (actually it crashed onto the running track separating the ball park from a soccer game that was going on in the adjacent field). Fortunately, everyone on the two fields and the four people in the plane survived.
All the Girlfriend has to say is, "Anyone want to buy a cafeteria tray?"
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