Sometimes Real Life Can Be Hazardous to Health of Players

Baseball players aren’t supposed to get hurt like this.

A line drive up the middle, maybe. But John Smiley closes a car door on his pitching hand.

A collision in the outfield, OK. But Ruben Sierra falls down an escalator at a shopping mall.

A spiking at third base, sure. But Wade Boggs pulls muscles by pulling off his cowboy boots.

Not exactly he-man hurts.

“These are accidents that happen to people every day,” said Bret Saberhagen, who needed 16 stitches to close facial cuts after he tripped in a New York hotel room a few years ago.

“When you think of an injury to an athlete, it’s usually something that happens on the field,” he said. “It makes you feel worse, though, because you think it’s something that could have been avoided.”

Some of baseball’s most serious injuries have happened that way. Bob Ojeda nearly severed a finger with hedge clippers, Curt Simmons sliced a toe with a lawn mower and Dick Allen put his hand through a headlight while pushing a stalled car.

And some of the on-field injuries occur in weird ways, too. Vince Coleman’s career almost ended when his leg got caught in an automatic tarpaulin machine, and Pat Zachry, upset at giving up the hit that enabled Pete Rose to tie for the longest hitting streak in National League history, kicked the dugout steps and broke his toe.

Just last week, four more highly skilled, highly trained athletes went down with ignominious injuries.

First, it was Sierra. One of the American League’s most talented players, he put himself out of action when he sprained an ankle chasing after his daughter on a mall escalator in Texas.

“When it happened, I just thought, ‘I don’t get hurt on the field, but I get hurt here. I can’t believe it.’ It just shows you have to be careful everywhere,” he said.

On Friday, two top pitchers went down.

Smiley, one of Pittsburgh’s fine young pitchers, slammed a taxi door on his left hand after a game in Atlanta. He’s out at least until the All-Star break with a broken finger.

“I didn’t think it was that serious,” Smiley said. “I broke the hand before, and it wasn’t as swollen as the first time.”

The same day, Chuck Finley, an All-Star with the Angels, stepped in a hole while walking to the SkyDome in Toronto. He missed one start.

On Saturday in San Diego, the New York Mets survived a scare involving former Cy Young winner Dwight Gooden. Reserve catcher Mackey Sasser was looking for a place to put a chair in the clubhouse and accidentally set it down on Gooden’s left foot, and then sat down.

Gooden thought his middle toe was broken, but it wasn’t. Instead, the Mets said there was some “soft-tissue damage.” He went five innings in a winning effort against the Dodgers on Monday night.

But another Cy Young winner, Jim Lonborg, was never the same after a skiing accident following Boston’s championship season in 1967. He tore ligaments in a fall on the slopes at Lake Tahoe and did not completely recover.

“I’m a little embarrassed about this,” he said a few days after the accident. Two years later, he cut up his foot while running through a parking lot at his apartment complex.

In 1988, Roger Clemens, a two-time Cy Young winner, was forced to miss a start for the first time in several seasons when he injured his back--moving furniture at home.

Boggs, a five-time batting champion, also put himself out of Boston’s lineup a few years ago when he also pulled a muscle in his back while pulling off his cowboy boots at a hotel room in Toronto.

Ojeda and Coleman missed postseason games because of their problems. Ojeda almost cut off a finger while trimming his hedges and was out of the 1988 playoffs; he subsequently hired someone to do the lawn.

During the 1985 playoffs, Coleman, one of baseball’s fastest players, could not get out of the way of an automatic tarp-rolling machine that moved at a clip of one-half mile per hour. He did not play again until the next season.

Coleman’s teammate, pitcher Danny Cox, wrecked himself at spring training in 1986. He chipped a bone in his ankle when he jumped off a seawall while fishing.

Allen, among the game’s brightest young sluggers in 1967, missed the last month of the season after cutting two tendons and severing a nerve in his right hand. He hurt himself on a rainy night in Philadelphia when his hand went through a headlight as he tried to push his 10-year-old Ford toward a hill after the battery went dead.

Then there was the time All-Star Lou Whitaker hurt himself trying to do the splits while dancing with his wife at a party. Or the time Cecil Upshaw sliced his hand on a rain gutter, trying to show teammates how he used to dunk basketballs.

Sometimes even celebrations end up sour.

Dave Dravecky, who battled back from cancer to pitch in 1989, sustained a broken arm in San Francisco’s pileup after the Giants won the pennant.

And there was the Yankees’ celebration in 1949. All season long, the Yankees had been plagued by injuries, so many that the newspapers began a daily count.

So when the Yankees finally outlasted their injuries and beat Boston on the final day to win the pennant, Coach Bill Dickey, a former Hall of Fame catcher, jumped for joy. He jumped right up, hit his head on the dugout ceiling, and knocked himself out.

Ruben Sierra