This past weekend was chock full of Grapefruit League and Cactus League action. Which means baseball’s back! But that doesn’t mean good baseball’s back. You can force players back on the field, but you can’t force those players to not be sloppy, and we’ve already seen our fair share of Spring Training accidents. Here I count down the top three to date.
Spring Training: A Time For Helmets
(3) Josh Beckett gets hit in the head by a ball in BP. Details are absent, but that lets us use our imaginations. He's okay, implying he didn't get hit by a scorching line drive, so we're left assuming he was hanging in the outfield when he got nailed by an errant fly ball. Somebody needs to pay better attention! In Beckett's defense, it's possible he caught a glimpse of John Lackey and turned to throw up.
(2) Nick Blackburn gets hit in the head by a ricochet in BP. Here, catcher Rene Rivera was throwing a ball back to the mound, but his throw was off-line, hitting the side of the L screen and bouncing off to clip Blackburn in the ear. Have you ever played with an L screen before? They're designed for safety, yet in truth they provide anything but. They're distracting when you're a pitcher, causing you to alter your mechanics, and they're annoying to throw around when you're a catcher, because they occupy most of the throwing lane. Your throw has to be perfect, otherwise the pitcher might trip into the L screen trying to make a catch, or the ball might hit the screen and ricochet, as Rivera's did. The L must stand for Lousy!
(1) Greg Golson gets hit in the head by an A.J. Burnett pitch in BP. The clear message here is that batting practice is a death trap. Golson's fine, which means we can laugh about this guilt-free. It's funny because A.J. Burnett hit his own teammate in the head, and it's funny because it comes with this picture.
Do you ever go to the park and throw the ball around with your buddies? Do you ever feel inadequate, because while the pros pull everything off with ease and precision, you and your friends are all sloppy? Don’t get too down on yourself. The pros are just as sloppy as you are. The only difference between you and the pros is that the pros get weeks of spring practice to stop hitting each other in the head before they go on TV.
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