Weirdest Injuries in Rockies’ history

It’s no doubt the MLB season is a long, grueling marathon which unsurprisingly leads to injuries and time spend on the Injured List. Many injuries are common, such as muscle pulls and strains, ligament sprains, bruises, or soreness, which can all arise from playing 162 ball games every year. Many of these are caused by baseball activities, getting hit by a pitch, tweaking a muscle running, sliding into a base weird, etc., but occasionally, players will have to go on the injured list or miss games from some misfortune on and off the field. So today, let’s take a look at some of the strangest, most bizarre incidents that caused former Rockies to miss playing time. We’re looking at injuries that happened off the field or caused by something other than something that would normally happen during a baseball game.

Larry Walker, 1996

While he eventually got into the Hall of Fame, one of the few reasons voter were skeptical to induct Larry Walker was his issues with injuries that limited his time on the field. During the 1996 season, Walker missed two and half months of the season with a broken left collar bone. During the offseason that followed, it was reported that Walker separated his right shoulder during a fishing trip in Vancouver, British Colombia. While this was an unfortunate, off the field injury, Walker was lucky to have this happen in the offseason and did not miss any time and would eventual go on to win the NL MVP the following year in 1997.

Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Clint Barmes, 2005

Clint Barmes spent eight years of his 13 year MLB career manning second base for the Rockies. Barmes debuted in 2003, but didn’t become a regular for the Rockies until the 2005 season. He started that year strong at the plate, batting .329 and hitting 8 home runs through the first 54 games. But Barmes’ full rookie season would be derailed after his injury. The cause: deer meat. Todd Helton gifted his teammate with a slab of deer meat and while transporting the package, the second baseman fell and broke his collarbone. The injury would sideline Barmes from June 5th through September 2nd. The difference in his performance was also noticable, batting .318 in 84 games before, and only .244 in 579 games after the incident with the Rockies. To help the collar bone heal, doctors needed to place a titanum plate and nine screws in his shoulder. Barmes continued playing for the Rockies for five more season before being traded to the Astros prior to the 2011 season.

Troy Tulowitzki, 2008

No list of injuries could be complete without mentioning Troy Tulowitzki, whose talent and promising career was hindered by constant injuries. Tulo missed 771 games between 2008 and 2015, a total of 41% of possible games those season thanks to eleven, yes eleven trips, to the Injured List. Two of these instances came in 2008, first the shortstop missed 46 games early in the season from a torn thigh tendon. Three weeks after returning Tulo’s unfortunate injury occurred. After being pulled form a game in the 7th inning, Tulo took his frustration out on one of his bats, smashing it to pieces on the ground in the dugout. The bat shattered as one might expect and sliced Tulowitzki’s hand. The temper tantrum had major impacts, resulting in 16 stitches to his right hand. Fortunately, there was no damage to any ligaments, and Tulo was back after a couple weeks.

Josh Outman, 2012

Josh Outman (a great name for a pitcher) pitched in 88 games for the Rockies between 2012 and 2013, but his Rockies debut was delayed in 2012 by an unique injury. Due to a run-in with food poisoning, Outman started the 2012 season on the Injured List with an oblique strain. The food poisoning led to vomiting so violently, the pitcher hurt his oblique muscle leaving him unable to pitch. The oblique injury kept Outman sidelined for the first 6 weeks of the season, making his debut May 12th. Outman played two season with the Rockies throwing 94.2 innings and a 5.99 ERA in his brief stint with the team and continued to have six year career between four different teams including Oakland, Cleveland, and New York.

Carlos González, 2014

Baseball players keep themselves busy during games by chewing on things, sunflower seeds, gum, and chewing tobacco to name a few. Carlos González is on this list, but his incident is less of an injury and more of an illness that had him leave a game in 2014. The outfielder had to leave a game in 2014 due to dizziness after accidentally swallowing his chewing tobacco. Manager Walt Weiss at the time stated, “He might’ve swallowed some dip or something. He landed hard, knocked the wind out of himself, swallowed some dip, dehydration, all those things were factors.” The illness only kept González out of the lineup the rest of that night and was back in the lineup the next day.

These injuries are great examples of how professional athletes, despite their supernatural talent and athleticism still have mishaps like the rest of us. Are there any strange, weird injuries that we missed? Leave a comment with any that we missed or your favorite weird athlete injury stories!

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