UCLA’s Tyler Rahmatulla Breaks Wrist in Dogpile: Are There Safe Celebrations Anymore?

Somewhere in the above dogpile, UCLA second baseman Tyler Rahmatulla’s season ended. Considering that UCLA’s will continue this weekend at the College World Series, that’s a bit unfortunate.

Apparently, Rahmatulla broke his wrist, though it didn’t immediately trouble him and was only confirmed by X-rays yesterday. (That’s why you see no screams of pain in the video, I guess.) It’s a serious blow to the Bruins’ title hopes—Rahmatulla hit third and was batting .328 on the year—but it’s also a reminder that freak accidents are called freak accidents for a reason.

Between Rahmatulla and Kendry Morales, it seems like there’s been a rash of celebrations-cum-injuries in baseball this year. But, without doing the math, I’d guess injuries have happened in two of hundreds or thousands of celebrations in sports this year. Is it worth curtailing celebrations to guard against a less-than-1% chance of losing a player to injury?

I don’t think so. But I don’t think that will prevent teams from toning down their reveling in the spoils of victory. And you would think that if freak accidents were worth the ounce of prevention, you would think we would have heard about deer meat and fondue prohibitions in contracts by now, right?

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