For safety’s sake on the mound and at the plate . . .

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Josh Smith

Josh Smith took one for the team Monday—a slider in his face . . .

Maybe it depends upon your definition of “good news.” Rangers outfielder Josh Smith took one on the jaw in the third inning Monday, on an 89 mph slider from Orioles relief pitcher Danny Coloumbe. A Rangers trainer looked him over before he walked off the field under his own power, but Smith was sent to the hospital regardless.

“We did take him to the ER,” said Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, the former three-time World Series-winning Giants manager now in his first season out of retirement. “He had some CT tests. They came out clean. So, we got good news there. He’s feeling better as I’m speaking right now. Tomorrow, we’ll just reevaluate him.”

Coloumbe himself was in the game that early because Orioles starter Kyle Bradish was knocked out of the game an inning earlier. Not by a Rangers uprising—the Orioles held on to win, 2-0—but by a line drive off his right foot, courtesy of Rangers catcher Jonah Heim. Initial X-rays showed no fracture but Bradish is out for now with a bruise.

If you want to call it that, Bradish was a little more fortunate than Smith. Not just because Heim’s liner nailed his foot and not his face, but because the liner was measured as traveling 104 mph.

Go ahead and say baseball ain’t beanbag if you must. But at least acknowledge that batters injuring pitchers on bullet-train line drives back to the box aren’t trying to be cute or sending messages. Neither are pitchers injuring batters even on 89 mph sliders they’re not throwing as purpose pitches and may not be able to control.

There was also Boston’s Justin Turner and San Diego’s Austin Nola taking pitches in the face during spring training. There were Bryce Harper (Phillies) and Kevin Pillar (then a Met) each taking one in the face two seasons ago. There’ve been others. Too many others. On both sides of the ball.

Unless Commissioner ADD and his rules-changing fetishists take a hard look at another rule change or two, someone’s going to get killed, either by a pitch or a line drive in the head. Maybe the first change should be moving the pitching rubber back at least the equal distance to the length of home plate.

Kyle Bradish

. . . an inning after Orioles starter Kyle Bradish was hit in the right foot by a comeback line drive. Bradish was lucky—it could have been his face.

Right now, you think the rubber is 60’6″ from the plate. You’re wrong. As my cherished Mets/Senators/Tigers friend, former pitcher Bill Denehy, pointed out to me when we first talked four years ago, the actual distance is 59’1″ from the front of the plate. The 60’6″ is the distance from the rubber to the back point of the plate. Throw in a pitcher who can break three digits on the speedometer with a long stride, and the distance shortens. Dangerously.

Denehy was the player sent to the Senators to finish the agreement by which Hall of Famer Gil Hodges became the Mets’ manager. Today he’s almost as passionate about moving the rubber back for safety’s sake as he is about the struggle to get full major league pensions for himself and 500+ other pre-1980, short-career players frozen out when the owners and the players’ union re-aligned the pension plan in 1980.

“What baseball hasn’t seemed to take into account is, if you go back forty years ago, the average fastball back then was probably about 85 miles an hour,” the former righthander  said by phone from his Florida home Monday.

You had your exceptional pitchers who could throw at 95, or Nolan Ryan who was over 100. As the fastball has increased . . . they’re also not taking into account the size of the ballplayer. You now have several pitchers 6’8″ or 6’10”. When you look at a pitcher that tall, he’s going to take a stride as long as seven feet. If you take that closer to home plate, you’re throwing 100 mph not at 59’2″ but less than that because of the stride that person takes.

That’s looking from the mound side of the equation. Now, look at it from the batter’s box. Denehy is just as emphatic about it. As well you might expect of a pitcher who experienced two batted balls hitting him in the head, a hit just off his eye in college and once off the side of his face in the minors.

“Because of the strength and the velocity of the balls coming off the bat nowadays,” he said, “a pitcher, if he throws his all out fastball like the majority of the relief pitchers do today, he’s not going to be in that perfect fielding position. If a ball is hit around the head area, he’s not going to have the time to be able to get the glove up to deflect or move his head in one direction or the other to get out of the way of a line drive.”

The day before we spoke of it, the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton hit a home run that traveled 485 feet at 118 mph. Some drives, line and otherwise, have been measured traveling as fast as 122 mph. When you watch a game on television and note what the exit velocity of a batted ball is shown to be, picture that ball traveling not into the outfield or over the fence but up into the pitcher’s face.

Bill Denehy

Because of the strength and velocity of the balls coming off the bat nowadays, [a pitcher’s] not going to be in that perfect fielding position. If a ball is hit around the head area, he’s not going to have time to be able to get the glove up to deflect or move his head in one direction of the other to get out of the way of a line drive.—Bill Denehy, former major league pitcher.

Now do you get it? These aren’t all “glazing” or “glancing” blows as too many people want to think. These can be howitzer shells against which either a pitcher whose stride shortens an already deceptively-short distance from the plate, or a batter set to hit, has maybe minus a second to react and survive. You can’t just shake off a 118 mph bullet hit right back into your grille or a 101 mph bullet thrown up into it.

The control issue has two sides to it. Those tasked with finding fresh talent still seem to prize velocity uber alles. It’s no longer just a pleasant joke that an absolute control pitcher such as Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, who couldn’t throw a ball through a sheet of paper but knew what he was doing on the mound and knew where to put his pitches, wouldn’t get even half a second look as a prospect today.

Those who note the inconsistency of manufactured baseballs the past few years struggle to convince baseball’s government that too many of the inconsistently-made balls are difficult if not almost impossible for pitchers to control even if they’re not trying to throw bullet-train fastballs alone.

The independent Atlantic League tried moving the rubber back in 2021. Wrote Bleacher Report‘s Brett Taylor, “Unlike other changes that were met with skeptical acceptance, that one was never particularly popular, nor did the data bear out that it was getting the intended results (more balls in play, as batters should have a little more time to make contact).”

The cited link is a Ringer piece by The MVP Machine co-author Ben Lindbergh with Rob Arthur. The piece said the rule was designed to “increase action on the basepaths, create more balls in play, improve the pace and length of games, and reduce player injuries.” Notice which one was the last of four considerations noted.

Ray Chapman was killed by a fastball to his head in 1920; Hall of Famer Mickey Cochrane was nearly killed by one in 1937. It took several experiments, too many of which were laughed out of town, before batting helmets became mandatory between 1953 (when Branch Rickey’s Pirates began using them) and 1971 (when the last grandfathered such player retired).

But Herb Score may have been lucky to be alive after Gil McDougald’s line drive crashed into his face in 1957. His pitching career was compromised soon enough, after his elbow blew out while making an impressive early 1958 return. It left him never the same pitcher again, but he lived a full life after the mound as a beloved Cleveland baseball broadcaster from 1964-1997.

Hall of Famer Mike Mussina took one on the mound in 1998. Three years later, he called his injury “almost entirely mental,” as if saying that overcoming any fear that any ball he threw would be hit right back to him was harder than getting hit in the face. He was lucky a broken nose was all he got from it.

It’s no funnier when a pitcher gets drilled in the face than when a batter gets it. Spare us the mental toughness bit, please. Mental toughness is admirable but it should not be tested by injuries that can be made a little more preventable—and a lot less potentially fatal.

Do you want to see pitchers going to the mound and batters going to the plate with football helmets and facemasks on their heads? Didn’t think so. The absolute least you can do for their protection—screw basepath action, more balls in play, and paces of play—is move the damn rubber back another seventeen inches. (And, dammit, start making consistent baseballs fair to both pitchers and batters that even the speed-uber-alles pitchers can control.)

Baseball’s supposed to be the thinking person’s sport. It’s too long past time for the game’s thinking people to do some hard thinking and doing about this.

26 minutes and other Opening Day salvos

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Rafael Devers

Rafael Devers (Red Sox), the Show’s first ever to strike out without a pitch thrown, taken, or swung on and missed—on a pitch clock violation.

So. After encyclopædic volumes worth were said and done, the average shortening of games on Opening Day was a whopping . . . 26 minutes. The new rules, don’t you know?

I may be on board with the pitch clock, but I’m not on board with cheers about the shortening when a fourth grade math student can tell you they’d have been shortened more by eliminating half the broadcast commercials. That’s accounting for the spots before each half inning and during any inning jam in which a pitching change was made.

But it didn’t stop the Blue Jays and the Cardinals needing three hours and 38 minutes to finish with a 10-9 Blue Jays win, paced by George Springer’s five hits for the Jays and opened with Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright warbling “The Star Spangled Banner” to just about everyone’s surprise in Busch Stadium.

Two players made history under the new rules. Rafael Devers (third baseman, Red Sox) became the first in Show to strike out on a pitch clock violation. Marcus Stroman (pitcher, Cubs) became the first in Show to be assessed a ball on a clock violation.

Leading off the eighth, Devers was rung up on 2-2 with Bryan Baker on the mound for the Orioles and the Red Sox in a 10-4 hole. “This doesn’t make sense to me,” said an announcer, “because he’d already looked at the pitcher. The pitcher’s not even ready to throw.”

Devers had checked back into the box with a few seconds remaining after stepping out to knock dirt out of his cleats. Even as Baker wasn’t quite ready to throw, plate umpire Lance Barksdale bagged him. It didn’t stop the Red Sox from posting a three-spot in the inning. “There’s no excuse,” said manager Alex Cora. “They know the rules.”

Knowing them and being able to maneuver within them for the first time in regular-season play are not exactly common. But it’s entirely possible that Devers not being dinged might have made a small difference. Led by Adley Rutschmann becoming the first catcher in Show history to have a five-hit Opening Day, the Orioles out-lasted the Red Sox, 10-9, after almost handing the game all the way back to the Olde Towne Team in the bottom of the ninth.

Remember: I’m also on board with turning the damn clock off in the eighth and later. Devers may yet prove evidence on behalf of that.

Stroman got his while checking Brewers runner Brice Turang at second with Christian Yelich at the plate in the third. The pitch clock expired about a hair before Stroman turned to pitch from the stretch. “It’s tough, this pitch clock,” Stroman told reporters postgame. “It’s a big adjustment. I don’t think people really realize it. It just adds a whole other layer of thinking.”

Yelich finally worked a walk out. The Brewers didn’t score then or the rest of the game. The Cubs won it, 4-0.

Jeff McNeil became the first Met to be hung with a pitch clock violation strike—for waiting for Pete Alonso to get back to first on a foul ball. Oops. Manager Buck Showalter was unamused that the clock began to tick before Alonso returned to the pad. McNeil remained mad just long enough to nail a base hit.

That was in an Opening Day game the Mets won, 5-3, beating the Marlins, but they might have had one more, at least, if not for someone whacking Brandon Nimmo with the stupid stick in the third. With first and third, Nimmo dropped a bunt—and hit into an inning-ending double play despite the run scoring. Thus the risk the wasted out, which is exactly what the sac bunt is, carries against defenders alert enough.

The good news there was Max Scherzer holding on despite all three Miami runs charged to his account and the Mets making simple enough work against a still not quite ready Sandy Alcantara. The bad was Justin Verlander having to miss a week while dealing with a muscle strain in his upper back near his throwing shoulder.

Perhaps it was miraculous that Aaron Judge picked up right where he left off from last season and hit one out in his first plate appearance against the Giants. That launched a 5-0 Yankee win that saw both starting pitchers, Gerrit Cole and Logan Webb, nail eleven and twelve strikeouts, respectively—the first opposing Opening Day starters to do that since Max the Knife (then a National, with twelve) and Jacob deGrom (then a Met, with ten) in 2019.

Speaking of deGrom, alas, the good news was, the Rangers got him a small truckload of runs. The bad news was that deGrom, still not all the way ready after a spring training disrupted by a side strain, also surrendered five before the Rangers unloaded for a nine-run fourth and held on to win, 11-7. They became the first Opening Day team to have a nine run-or-better inning since the Padres dropped 11 in the sixth against the Mets in the 1997 opener.

And Shohei still gonna Shohei. The Angels’ two-way unicorn struck ten Athletics out before his day’s work was finished. He even ripped a 110 mph base hit and threw a 101 mph pitch before he was done. And what did it prove worth in the end? Squatski. The Angels lost, 2-1. It put Ohtani onto a dubious record book page: the only pitcher to punch ten out and surrender no runs in his team’s Opening Day loss.

Meanwhile, the Rockies are still gonna Rockie, alas, even when they win. With a pair of home runs by first baseman C.J. Cron leading the way, the Rockies battered the Padres for seventeen hits—despite striking out at the plate seventeen times against four Padres pitchers. Making them the first team since 1900 to deliver that dubious 1-2 punch in a nine-inning game. Ever.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it once more. This is baseball. Where anything can happen—and usually does. With or without rule changes running the bases from the sublime to the ridiculous and back to the absurd. And wish though Commissioner ADD and his minions might, 26 minutes isn’t exactly that big a difference from even last year’s average.

When it gets late, ditch the clock

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Max Scherzer

[I]f everybody’s playing baseball the way it should be, don’t ever let that [pitch] clock determine the outcome of the game. Ever.—Max Scherzer.

Very well, I surrender. I can live with the pitch clock—on one condition. The same condition by which the Mets’ Opening Day starting pitcher, Max Scherzer, can live with it.

“I’m not saying the clock’s not valuable,” Scherzer tells The Athletic’s Spink Award Hall of Fame writer Jayson Stark. “It is. But if everybody’s playing baseball the way it should be, don’t ever let that [pitch] clock determine the outcome of the game. Ever.”

Max the Knife was agreeing with Stark’s own assessment, an agreement with which I agree, too, with one codicil I’ll note shortly:

I’d be thinking seriously about turning the clock off in the eighth and ninth innings of games when the score was within three runs either way. That removes the chances of a game ending on a pitch-clock technicality. Plus, when those at-bats freeze in time, as the tension hangs over the big moment, that doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of “dead time.” Does it?

How is it any kind of problem if the game-turning at-bats late in tight games last a few seconds longer? Isn’t that the lesson of Mike Trout versus Shohei Ohtani, as the most dramatic final at-bat any WBC scriptwriter could ever write?

My codicil: Turn the damn pitch clock off for the eight and the ninth, period, I don’t care what the score happens to be. Not even if the game still looks like a blowout with a mushroom cloud. It’s entirely possible for a team to pick up, dust off, and neutralise or overthrow a blowout in the mid or late innings.

You demand the evidence? You got it. Here are the regular season double-digit deficits that started closing up in the fifth or later across Show history:

Twelve-run deficit—5 August 2001: The Guardians (known then as the Indians) down that margin coming into the seventh. Manager Charlie Manuel may or may not have thought it was the impossible deficit when he pulled four regulars out of the lineup. Well, now: Three in the seventh, four in the eighth, five in the ninth—and with two outs, yet—forcing extra innings where a no-name named Jolbert Cabrera sent Kenny Lofton home with a broken-bat single in the eleventh. Final score: 15-14.

15 June 1925: Philadelphia Athletics vs. Cleveland. Down by twelve in the seventh as well, Connie Mack’s men scored once in that inning . . . then sent thirteen runs home in the eighth, an uprising only beginning when Jimmy Dykes slashed a three-run triple. It ended with Hall of Famer Al Simmons hitting a three-run homer. In between, nine of ten reached on seven singles and two walks. Talk about serving the ancient Indians a shit sandwich: they couldn’t push a run across in the top of the ninth. Final: 17-15.

Eleven-run deficit—17 April 1976: Phillies vs. Cubs. The Phillies were in the hole 13-2 by the fifth. Oops. Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt hit a two-run homer in the fifth. They scored three in the seventh, five in the eighth (two-run single by should-be Hall of Famer Dick Allen; three-run bomb by Schmidt), three in the ninth for a 15-13 lead, and—after the Cubs tied it in the bottom of the ninth—a third homer from Schmidt (two runs) and a sacrifice fly, answered by only one Cub run in the bottom of the tenth. 18-6 your final from the Friendly Confines.

Ten-run deficit—As it happens, there are five such games:

2 June 2016, Mariners vs. Padres. The Ms down ten in the top of the sixth; came back to win, 16-13. The biggest inning—the seventh, when the Ms sent nine runs home on seven RBI singles.

8 May 2004, Rangers vs. Tigers. Down 14-4 in the fifth, the Rangers marched back to win, 16-15, in ten innings.

21 August 1990, Phillies vs. Dodgers. Down 11-1 in the eighth, the Phillies overthrew the Dodgers, 12-11. The biggest inning—the Phillies’ nine-run top of the ninth, including John Kruk’s one-out, all-runs-unearned grand slam to tie, followed by a base hit and an RBI double to take the lead the Dodgers couldn’t close in the bottom of the ninth.

4 June 1989, Blue Jays vs. Red Sox. Down 10-0 entering the seventh. The biggest inning—none, really: Two in the seventh on a double play grounder and a ground-rule double. Four in the eighth on a two-run single, an RBI double, and an RBI single. Game-tying RBI single in the ninth. Unanswered two-run homer in the top of the twelfth. 13-11, Jays the final.

25 April 1901, Tigers vs. Orioles. OK, that’s a ringer: in 1901, the Orioles were born as the Milwaukee Brewers, before moving and becoming the infamous St. Louis Browns who moved to Baltimore in 1954. The Tigers trailed 13-3 in the eighth. The game log isn’t available, but the line score is: the Tigers scored one in the eighth and ten in the bottom of the ninth. 14-13 your final, and that was four years before a kid named Ty Cobb arrived in Detroit. By the way, that was also Opening Day, folks.

Berra’s Law: It ain’t over till it’s over. Andujar’s Law: In baseball, there’s just one word—you never know. Stark’s Law: In baseball, anything can happen. Kallman’s Amendment: . . . and usually does. Incumbent or newborn, the rules should not make room for another of Professor Yogi’s fabled observations to come sickeningly true: It gets late early out there.

Emphasis on “classic”

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Shohei Ohtani

Baseball’s great unicorn struck baseball’s greatest all-around position player out to end the WBC in Japan’s favour. Who says baseball’s gods don’t know how to script classics anymore?

Well, now. Japan walked it off against Mexico, earning the chance to face the United States in Tuesday’s World Baseball Classic final, and those who hadn’t been driven away by the harrumphing over Edwin Diáz’s season-ending injury after closing out a win by Puerto Rico last week got the most dreamy of dream matches.

Teammates on the Los Angeles Angels, Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani squared off in the WBC final. It was Japan’s third trip to that final dance and first since 2009. It was Trout’s first appearance in any kind of championship or championship-aiming game since his third full major league season.

The game’s greatest all-around position player, still, against its unicorn of a virtuoso two-way player. Anyone who says this was what Trout and Ohtani really signed up for when Ohtani joined the Angels and Trout extended with them is fooling him or herself. But it slammed an exclamation point down upon this WBC in ways that would have been ridiculed as corny in a Hollywood treatment.

There was Trout, with Mets jack-of-most-trades Jeff McNeil aboard on a leadoff walk and two out—thanks to Mookie Betts dialing Area Code 4-6-3—for the United States. There was Ohtani on the mound for Japan. There was Cardinals first baseman Paul Goldschmidt on deck. And there was Ohtani throwing a slider just away from Trout’s swing. Strike three. 3-2, Japan. Third WBC title for Japan in three trips to the penultimate game.

“I was hoping,” Goldschmidt said postgame, “when Jeff got on base, that if Mike hit a two-run homer to win the game, that everyone was going to go bananas, that the world was going to end.”

“Great pitch,” said Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado. “If Mike Trout’s not hitting it, I don’t think anybody else is.”

“It sucks it didn’t go the way I wanted it to,” Trout said postgame. Then, he tipped his fins to his Angels teammate in Japan’s silks. “He won Round One.” Suggesting there might be yet one more showdown between the pair in another WBC a few years hence. Might. Who knows? Both Angel teammates say they’ll be back for the next one.

Teammates and friends in MLB, Trout and Ohtani (and everyone else partaking) knew this one had the potential of immortality. After Ohtani ignited the rally that pushed Japan past Mexico at the eleventh hour, with a leadoff double, he let the world know just how aware of it he really was.

“Obviously, it’s a big accomplishment to get to the championship series,” he told reporters, “but there’s a huge difference between getting first and second. I’m going to do all I can to get to first place.” He made good on it.

Dream makers loved nothing more than to see Ohtani on the mound with Trout at the plate. Ohtani said he’d be available for bullpen duty in the title game. If brought in and Trout was on his inning’s menu, there wouldn’t really be words to describe the moment’s electricity.

That wouldn’t stop assorted observers and pundits from hunting those words. They wouldn’t all be hosannas, either. From the moment Diáz went down with a patellar tendon tear that put paid to his 2023 season for the Mets while celebrating a Puerto Rico win, the volume of screaming bloody murder has equaled that of reminding one and all that freak injuries—which is precisely what Diáz’s was—can happen any old time.

In spring training. En route a spring training camp. In your own home or driveway. At the supermarket or the mall. Even playing with your children at home or on the beach or in a park. Celebrating after MLB wins regular, postseason, or postseason-sending alike. Or, suffering a non-contact anterior cruciate ligament tear just prior to the WBC’s beginning in the first place—as happened to Dodgers middle infielder Gavin Lux to put paid to his 2023 season, too.

My, but the lack of bleating about canceling spring training because of its dangers was enough to leave you with a bad case of tinnitus, wasn’t it? But the Mets’ top relief pitcher incurring an absolute freak injury that can happen—and has happened—any old time during an MLB season or postseason caused what seemed like half the world demanding the WBC’s demise, post haste.

Trout probably spoke for his teammates, the players on all competing WBC teams, and the fans watching those games in the ballparks and on television where possible, when he said, “It was probably the funnest ten days I’ve ever had. I can’t really express what’s different about it. You can just feel it in your veins. It’s a special, special feeling.”

Baseball was fun to play again. The WBC was fun to watch. Three trainloads of MLB players entered the WBC representing their home countries or countries to which their families have powerful enough ties. They had the time of their lives playing games that meant something to them personally. In a tournament that looked more sensibly arrayed than MLB’s competition-diluting postseason array. Jumpstarting renewed interest in baseball in the countries whom they represented.

Maybe Mets pitcher Max Scherzer’s onto something when he says move the WBC out of springtime and into the All-Star break’s time frame.

Maybe with the All-Star Game meaningless, after all, what with the infestation and continuing pestilence of regular-season interleague play, it ought to be dumped once and for all and the WBC should take center stage in mid-July.

Maybe MLB’s lords should think twice before signing off on any more Rob Manfred rule tinkerings, time-of-game twistings, and postseason maneuverings. Then, maybe they should tell him to either think of remaking MLB’s postseason as truly meaningful as the WBC proved or find another line of work. (While they’re at it, they can tell him they’ve had it with broadcast blackouts, just the way fans have had it. It hurts the lords, too.)

Maybe MLB’s lords should just think, period. Or would that be asking them to behave beyond their competence?

Freak vs. foolish injuries

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Edwin Diáz

Edwin Diáz helped off the field after a freak season-ending knee injury while celebrating Puerto Rico’s quarterfinal advance in the WBC.

No, it’s not happy news that Mets relief ace Edwin Diáz is going to miss the 2023 season after tearing his patellar tendon celebrating Puerto Rico’s World Baseball Classic win. (Diáz and teammates whooped it up after beating the Dominican Republic to advance to the WBC quarterfinals.) But no, this does not exactly fall under the heading of Incredibly Stupid Injuries By Guys Who Ought to Know Better.

Further: I’d be all-in on shifting the WBC to a time of year when baseball players are in better shape to compete. Mets pitcher Max Scherzer thinks it might supplant the All-Star Game entirely and enable a full week’s worth of a mid-year break. That might be worth a look, if you can get past teams having similar concerns about their stars adding wear and maybe injuries as the stretch drive approaches. Might.

Meanwhile, the WBC means something to every player who signed up for it, whether representing MLB’s home country or representing their own home countries. They’re putting it on the line for the sort of honour that escapes the like of Keith Olbermann with his insouciantly sexist conclusion: The WBC is a meaningless exhibition series designed to: get YOU to buy another uniform, to hell with the real season, and split up teammates based on where their grandmothers got laid.

Diáz is also not the only one who went in, either, on a fresh or potential delicious multi-year, nine-figure deal. That’s how many millions Shohei Ohtani figures to make when he hits the market this fall, assuming the Angels decide to let him walk all the way into someone else’s arms?

You think Diáz tearing his patellar celebrating a key win is dumb at all, never mind the worst of the dumb? You sure don’t know the real history of incredibly foolish injuries. Diáz’s was a freak injury. It could have happened at a family wedding during some particularly exuberant whooping-it-up. It could have happened walking out to his car from the mall. He wasn’t even a hundredth as foolish as the following roll of baseball players and their incredibly weird injuries:

Bite Me Dept.—1923: Nondescript pitcher Clarence Bethen put his false teeth into his hip pocket, thinking he looked meaner on the mound when they were out. His lifetime 7.32 ERA thinks otherwise. But in one game he actually hit a double, slide hard into second—and took a bite in the butt from the pocketed choppers.

CONCLUSION: That wasn’t what they meant by putting your teeth into your work. (What was Bethen expecting when he pulled up at second—an immediate corned beef on rye with mustard?)

Jim and Jill Went Down the Hill Dept.—1967: Cy Young Award-winning Red Sox pitcher Jim Lonborg went skiing after the season. That’s where he suffered the torn left knee ligaments that cost him half the 1968 season and left him far less than the pitcher he was in 1967. It’s said Lonborg’s companion on that trip was actress Jill St. John, of whom he may or may not have been in hot pursuit down the slope.

CONCLUSION: Well, nobody could blame anyone for giving a Jill St. John hot pursuit. Except maybe Lonborg’s manager, Dick Williams, who probably took it as a) a devastating loss going into 1968; and, b) a personal affront to himself. Not necessarily in that order.

(Lonborg’s happy ending: he became a respected New England dentist after his pitching career ended, retiring from practise in 2017.)

Chumpionship Ring Dept.—1970: Braves closer Cecil Upshaw thought demonstrating his slam dunk technique by way of an awning on the street was a clever idea . . . until it cost him the entire season, after his ring got caught in it and he damaged ligaments in his hand.

CONCLUSION: Leave the slamming dunks to the ones who get paid to do them. The ones who wear NBA or WNBA underwear.

Take Him Out of the Ball Game Dept.—1983: On an off day for the Royals, Hall of Famer George Brett broke his toe running from . . . his kitchen to his living room, to continue watching a Cubs game, specifically to see his buddy Bill Buckner hit.

CONCLUSION: That was a foolish idea no matter whom Brett couldn’t bear not to see at the plate.

Rolling Blunder Dept.—1985: Vince Coleman, the Cardinals’ road running base thief, got his foot caught in a tarp-rolling machine at Busch Stadium before Game Four of the National League Championship Series. Incurring a bone chip in his knee and a foot bruise, Coleman—who set a rookie record for stolen bases that year—was stopped for the rest of that postseason.

CONCLUSION: It’s a lot safer to put your foot in your mouth. (Coleman did, a few times during his major league career.) But, seriously, this, too, was more of a freak accident than Vincent Van Go deciding to challenge a tarp roller to a footrace.

Cowboy Down Dept.—1986: Hall of Famer Wade Boggs once missed a week with a back strain suffered when . . . pulling on a pair of cowboy boots. This gave pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps a bad name.

CONCLUSION: Easy does it.

Oh, What a Mangled Web Dept.—1990: Then-Blue Jays outfielder Glenallen Hill fell out of bed and right into a glass table—suffering bruises and cuts on elbows, knees, and legs—as he . . . awoke violently from a nightmare about spiders.

CONCLUSION: Calling your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man . . .

Ice, Ice, Baby Dept.—1993: Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson fell asleep with an ice bag on his foot . . . and the Man of Steal suffered a nasty case of frostbite, which froze him out of three August games.

CONCLUSION: There’s more than one reason not to doze off during a game.

Sorry, Wrong Number Dept.—1994: Relief pitcher Steve Sparks once thought that just because a motivational speaker he’d seen could rip a thick phone book in half he could do it—until his dislocated shoulder told him, “No, you can’t.”

CONCLUSION: Don’t believe everything you see.

Bed Sore Dept.—2002: Outfielder Marty Cordova once suffered a bad sunburn across his face . . . on a tanning bed.

CONCLUSION: Tan, don’t burn, get a Coppertone tan.

Oh, Deer! Dept.—2005: Promising Rockies rook Clint Barmes was given some choice deer meat by elder teammate Todd Helton. The venison won the battle when its weight caused Barmes to fall and break his collarbone. He went from leading National League rookies in most offensive categories to journeyman after recovering.

CONCLUSION: Presume that Bambi isn’t exactly one of Barmes’s favourite films.

Pie in the Sky Dept.—2010: Marlins utility man Chris Coghlan tore the meniscus in his left knee when . . . he fell while trying to smoosh a pie in the face of Wes Helms, who’d just won a game for the Fish with a bases-loaded single.

CONCLUSION: It might have been a good thing Helms didn’t win it with a grand slam—Coghlan might have been tempted to try hitting him with a whole bakery truck.

Honey, I Forgot to Look Dept.—2012: Jonathan Lucroy reached under his bed for a sock and didn’t see his wife fiddling with suitcases on the bed. One of the suitcases fell over the bed and onto Lucroy’s hand. He hit the disabled list after trying but failing to hide that he couldn’t grip his bat properly.

CONCLUSION: Look out above.

Baggage Claim Dept.—Royals catcher Salvador Perez punished his knees enough in thousands of squats behind the plate without blowing the opening of the 2018 season when he suffered a torn medial collateral ligament in his knee . . . while carrying a heavy suitcase up some steps.

CONCLUSION: There are reasons Mr. Otis invented the (ahem) safety elevator.

Now you tell me what’s worse or what’s less responsible—a freak accident while celebrating a tournament win? Or, blowing a season showing on the street that you could have busted a backboard any old time you chose?