By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/06/hunter-strickland-and-doors-of.html
The hand's for pitching, not punching doors.Just when you began to get the vague idea that Hunter Strickland was growing up at last, he disabused you in one swell punch. Someone on Monday forgot to advise him that trying to throw a right cross at an inanimate object is even more foolish than throwing at a hitter you haven't seen in the almost three years since he took you yard twice in one postseason series.
Throwing at Bryce Harper last year after not having seen him at the plate since the second of those two 2014 National League division series bombs landed in McCovey Cove only got Strickland suspended six days for bad behaviour, and off easy at that. Throwing the right cross at a door after he couldn't close out the Marlins Monday got him a broken bone in his pitching hand and two months on the disabled list for bad behaviour.
At least Madison Bumgarner missed two months after a hand fracture incurred in honest combat, when he was hit by a line drive in a spring training game. Likewise Evan Longoria, who'll miss considerable time thanks to a finger fracture incurred when he was hit by a pitch trying to bunt last week.
"Life has an interesting and sometimes disappointing way of opening up our eyes," Strickland wrote in an apology he posted to Instagram. "Words cannot describe the amount of regret and sorrow I have for my actions . . . To my family, my teammates, my coaches, this organisation, and our fan base, I am truly sorry that one split second, stupid decision has caused so much harm and now set me back from being out there with my team to pursue our goal. As well as providing for my family."
How many men do you know required life to open their eyes at age 29 to such rank foolishness as small children learn before they're in kindergarten?
OK, there was John Tudor, Cardinals lefthander, age 31, having been freshly murdered by the Royals in Game Seven of the 1985 World Series, so furious about it that he punched an electric fan in the clubhouse. At least Tudor had an entire off-season to recover, from the cut he incurred and from the revelation that a writer in the press box, knowing how popular Tudor wasn't with the writers that year, couldn't resist crowing, "Ah, the shit hit the fan!"
Apparently, nobody told Hanley Ramirez about the precedent. While still a Marlin, Ramirez grounded out in a July 2012 game and was so furious he punched a dugout fan, cutting his hand. And Ramirez had one of baseball's all time empaths for his manager then. "Very stupid injury," crowed Ozzie Guillen after the game. "Very immature. You make an out, you hit something and you injure it, you don't just hurt yourself, you hurt the ballclub."
And there have been sillier injuries in baseball than those:
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Dem Drones---2016. Trevor Bauer, Indians pitcher, with a passion for drones, got sliced by one he was trying to repair, requiring stitches that broke open while he started Game Three of the 2016 American League Championship Series.
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Trampled Over Foot---2012. Joba Chamberlain had enough problems during his tenure with the Yankees without the one he incurred during spring training 2012: he was playing with his five-year-old son in a Tampa trampoline jump center when he dislocated his ankle falling from it---while still recovering from Tommy John surgery in the bargain.
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Honey, You Forgot to Duck---2012. Or, at least, in the case of Jonathan Lucroy, he forgot to make sure there could be no moving objects near enough to count when reaching under his hotel bed for a stray sock. Lucroy's wife bumped a suitcase over that landed on her husband's hand, costing him almost six weeks of play.
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What was Behind Door Number Three?---2010. Yankee pitcher A.J. Burnett, frustrated during his first start following the All-Star break after struggling several weeks previous in the absence of pitching coach Dave Eiland, decided a pair of swinging doors couldn't possibly hurt if he landed a punch. The doors didn't but Burnett did, injuring his hand. He tried to go back to the mound but was lifted after a hit batsman and a wild pitch.
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Pie a la Meniscus---2010. Chris Coghlan of the Marlins was so wired up to celebrate when Wes Helms hit a walkoff bomb for a Marlins win that he rushed it trying to give Helms a shaving cream pie in the puss . . . and fell, tearing his left meniscus, missing the rest of the season.
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Through the Glass Starkly---2008. Hunter Pence, then still with the Astros, stepped up from his hot tub outside his house to use the bathroom inside the house. The only thing in his way was a sliding glass door . . . which he didn't realise was closed. His cut hands and knees surely reminded him it was a brilliant idea to make sure the door is open before stepping through.
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While My Guitar Hero Gently Weeps---2006. Joel Zumaya, Tigers pitcher, missed the American League Championship Series thanks to a wrist injury---incurred playing
Guitar Hero too often for his own good. The second version of the popular music game was sort of dedicated to him: "No pitchers were harmed in the making of this video game. Except for one. Joel Zumaya. He had it coming."
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Oh, Deer!---2005. Rockies rookie Clint Barmes thought hauling up a flight of stairs a whole slab of deer he bagged on a hunting trip with teammate Todd Helton was the way to do it. The tumble down the steps, the shoulder and collarbone injuries, the aborting of his Rookie of the Year-level season (it happened in June), and the ultimate reduction of this once-glittering prospect to journeyman level play told him otherwise.
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He Should Have Blown a Trumpet, Instead---2004. Joshua had easier prey with the walls of Jericho than Kevin Brown did with a dugout wall after being lifted from a Yankee start. The good news---he was at least smart enough to use his non-pitching hand. The bad news---he came back just in time to be blown to bits by the Red Sox in Game Seven, 2004 American League Championship Series.
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Tan, Don't Burn, Stick with Coppertone Tan---2002. Marty Cordova, Orioles left fielder, dozed off on one of the tanning beds he was rather fond of employing, and burned his face. Doctors advised him to stay out of the sun and miss some day games for awhile.
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Motorcycle Meathead---2002. Jeff Kent. Giants second baseman. Spring training. Fell while washing his pickup truck and broke his wrist. Oops. Had to admit he was popping wheelies on his bike when he fell and broke the wrist.
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Get Off the F@cking Phone Book!---1994. Steve Sparks, a knuckleball pitcher for the Brewers, thought he'd pitch in on a motivational seminar the team hosted . . . by trying to rip a phone book in half, as he said he'd seen done at other motivational seminars. This is usually an even deeper exercise in futility than punching walls, fans, or doors, swinging or otherwise. The knuckleheader learned the hard way, dislocating his shoulder.
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Ice, Ice, Baby---1993. Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson fell asleep with an ice pack on his ankle . . . and woke up suffering frostbite. In August.
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Iron Man---1990. To this day Hall of Famer John Smoltz denies he ever tried ironing his shirt with himself still inside the shirt, in 1990 or any other time. He acknowledges he was burned on the day the iron incident happened---but insists he got spattered by boiling water spit on him by a portable steamer.
Bet the rent that the Giants aren't necessarily thrilled over Strickland's losing bout with a door. Manager Bruce Bochy---who isn't comfortable returning Mark Melancon to closing when he isn't completely recovered from assorted injuries---thought Strickland was showing so much newfangled maturity only to discover the hard way, when he went home to see it on television, that he'd lost Strickland thanks to a fist and a door.
Strickland was doing a better than expected job closing for the Giants, too. He had a 2.28 earned run average and thirteen saves in seventeen tries, not to mention a respectable 8.2 strikeouts-per-nine ratio and the National League's lead in games finished. Then he went from closing the door to getting closed by a door in one foolish instant.
"I completely understand how this portrays my character," wrote Strickland further in his Instagram
mea culpa, "which I will humbly work on areas in my life that need refinement." That's good. Because, unlike what might have happened if it had been a four-year-old child punching the door, there won't be a sympathetic parent there to put an arm around him saying it wasn't your fault, junior, the door had no business being there in the first place.
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