One of the bright spots for the Pittsburgh Pirates this year has undoubtedly been Ian Snell. In 95 and 2/3 innings, he's got a 2.63 ERA, a 1.14 WHIP, and 78 strikeouts to go with only 29 walks. After giving up 25 homers last year, he's on pace to give up about half as many this year. Those are some impressive numbers and they put him among the National League elite. After reading those stats, you can imagine why every Pirate fans' heart skipped a couple beats when they heard he would miss his next start. Well, until we heard why. Then we just laughed. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The right-hander blistered his finger while cooking in his kitchen.
"I was cooking a chicken breast for a salad and burned my finger," Snell said. "I'm all right, but the salad wasn't too good."
The thing is, by baseball standards, Snell's injury isn't even that strange. There's an entire web page full of weird baseball injuries. Here are some of my favorites:
- Rickey Henderson missed several games because of frost- bite. In August.
- Vince Coleman missed the 1985 World Series when he got rolled up in the tarp machine.
- Chris Brown missed a game with a strained eyelid after sleeping on an eye a funny way.
- Glenallen Hill missed a few games after falling out of his bed while having an arachnophobic dream about spiders. He dreamt that spiders were devouring him, jumped off his bed, fell through a glass table, and crawled through the shards of glass.
Do yourself a favor and finish the list. As for Snell and the Pirates; they're lucky. Snell is only missing one start and should pitch again on Saturday.
