These Are All-Star Excuses

How many different excuses have you ever used to get out of work? Housework, homework, work work, any work.

“I’m under the weather.”

“I forgot.”

“My dog ate it.”

“My kid’s sick.”

“Flat tire.”

“My dog ate my kid.”

“I had amnesia.”

“I forgot I had amnesia.”

As a rule, baseball players use better excuses.

Rotator cuffs. Ankle sprains. Wife’s having a baby. The ever-popular “personal problems.” The equally popular pulled groin muscle.

Pascual Perez went the wrong way on the freeway and couldn’t find his way back to the ballpark.

Darryl Strawberry overslept.

Jose Cardenal was kept awake all night by crickets. Another time Jose begged out of the lineup because he said he couldn’t get his eyelid unstuck.

George Brett, of course, sat out, no pun intended, with hemorrhoids. Oh, heck. Pun intended.

Anyhow, that was a honest excuse George had. I mean, nobody makes that one up.

And at least we can be thankful for people who come up with creative excuses. Chico Marx’s wife once caught him kissing a chorus girl. Chico said: “I wasn’t kissing her. I was whispering into her mouth.”

Most ballplayers won’t invent an alibi. If they say they are hurt, I believe they are hurt. If they say they can’t play, I believe they can’t play.

But all I know is that 1989 has become the Year of the Disabled List. You name him, he’s been disabled.

Jose Canseco, Dave Winfield, Bo Jackson, Doc Gooden, Kirk Gibson, Andre Dawson, Keith Hernandez, Gary Carter, Dennis Eckersley, Willie McGee, Jack Morris, Marty Barrett, Greg Swindell, Carlton Fisk, Jim Gott, Brett, half the Cincinnati Reds, everybody but Marge Schott’s mutt.

Is anybody healthy?

Whatever happened to this generation of muscle-toned, iron-pumped, aerobicized, Nautilus’d, vitamin-enriched, jogging, non-smoking, non-boozing, health-conscious athletes?

Three cheers for Cal Ripken, who never misses a game. Come back, Lou Gehrig, Billy Williams, Steve Garvey, wherever you are.

Not that today’s jocks are wimps. Far from it.

They just don’t stack up to the he-men of yesteryear. The guys who would play under any circumstances. Broken fingers. Broken toes. Broken hearts. They didn’t even have hamstrings back then. They had charley horses.

Bill Veeck told great stories about players like, say, Ty Cobb, who once got cut up in a knife fight and played the next day.

Hack Wilson, a notorious tippler, would soak in tubs with 50-pound blocks of ice, trying to sober up, then go out and play great. The only time he tried to get out of work was when he hopped over the wall to chase a heckler. Hack said later he wasn’t angry. He just wanted to get arrested so he could go sit someplace cool to recover from his hangover.

Then there was Mickey Mantle, who hit a hung-over homer, then told the guys on the bench: “You’ll never know how hard that was.”

These guys weren’t hurt, but they were hurting. They were ballplayers who knew their job was to be out there day after day, unless several limbs were busted.

Today, do you know why so many guys go on the disabled list? Because their owners have so much money invested in them over such a long period of time, they can’t afford to take any chances. Today’s athlete has become a Ming vase. You have to handle them carefully and keep them out of the sun as much as possible.

Oh, there are exceptions. Kirk Gibson’s body has been bent in more directions than Stretch Armstrong’s, but if Gibson can play, he plays. He once got hit in the face with a pitch, then played the next day.

I can’t help chuckling, though, at some of the things that have knocked 1989’s physical specimens out of their lineups. I believe their stories, but that’s the funny part. Nobody could make up stories like these.

Consider Andy Van Slyke.

An All-Star outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, a hustling, gifted, wonderful player, Van Slyke had to miss some action earlier this season because he hurt himself.

Putting on his pants.

Picture him in the manager’s office: “Uh, Skip, I can’t play tomorrow. Yep. The old trouser injury again.”

Next there is Mickey Hatcher, everybody’s favorite Dodger stuntman, the ballplayer who hustles in his sleep.

Mickey was at home one recent night when he heard some glass break. Some kids evidently were trying to break in. When the kids ran, Mickey ran after them. He ran 70 yards or so, then jumped a curb.

And pulled a hamstring.

“Uh, Skip, I was, uh, you see, I was chasing these burglars, you know? And, well, my leg, uh . . . “

I know Mick would never invent such a story, but anyway, now he’s on the disabled list, and I thought I’d heard everything.

Until David Wells, a relief pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, reported to the ballpark the other night. He had a bandage on his pitching hand. Five stitches had just been sewn into his thumb.

What happened to Wells? He put his left hand through a window pane.

Walking in his sleep.

That’s right. He hurt himself sleepwalking. Not since Ed Norton have I heard a gag like this.

“Uh, Skip, about this bandage, I, er, I was home sound asleep, see, and suddenly I was out on the ledge, and my hand was bleeding, and, uh, I woke up someplace in Quebec in my pajamas, I swear.”