SERENA Williams hurt her foot by stepping on a broken glass in a restaurant.
For that little misfortune, the Wimbledon queen will miss the three warm-up events before the US Open, and will most likely even miss the last major of the year.
Now that isn’t something that happens every day.
But curiously, that freak accident wasn’t the weirdest I encountered in the past weeks.
I regularly check Yahoo.com for anything newsworthy—sports or otherwise—and believe me, some of the injuries I’ve read make Serena’s a mild incident.
Some are too weird to be true, but they are.
The first one happened on July 3 when the Houston Astros’ Geoff Blum dislocated his shoulder, while putting a shirt on. Yep, I’m not kidding.
I wonder if he put, “shirt was a tad too tight,” on some medical form.
If you think that’s weird, here’s something that takes the cake.
Blum’s injury came after their 6-3 win over the San Diego Padres and just last week, the Padres’ Mat Latos was put on the injured list for 15 days after he strained the left side of his body because he tried to stifle a sneeze.
Yep, he didn’t want to go “Achung!”
According to ESPN, Blum isn’t the first sneeze victim of the MLB. There’s been three of them in the past, the most famous one being Sammy Sosa—the Greatest Homerun King of all time or the Greatest Cheat of all time (just take your pick).
I checked MLB.com and got a few more freakish injuries but I’ll just name two. Toronto Blue Jays’ Glenallen Hill, who has arachnophobia, had a nightmare about spiders crawling all over him and he ran and scraped himself up the stairs as he was trying to get rid of the imaginary creatures—while asleep. That happened in 1990.
Four years later, Steve Sparks of the Brewers saw a performance from a motivational group wherein two guys ripped a phonebook.
He tried to duplicate it but instead popped his shoulder.
The popped shoulders, apparently, have an explanation according to the article I’ve read regarding the one caused by the “a tad too tight shirt.” Baseball players’ bodies get so much abuse over such a long period that a little thing can cause a whole lot.
In the local scene, I can’t remember of hearing of any freakish injuries, but I do remember seeing a lot of incidents explained away by the team as due to “na-injured ang utok.”
I’m reminded of that because of the latest barrage we’ve been hearing from Floyd Mayweather Sr. regarding Manny Pacquiao.
I wanted to write a rebuttal in behalf of Pacquiao but I thought I’d just let it go.
Getting a reaction is what Floyd Sr. wants. It’s what motivated—and he got it—when he
started the Pacquiao-is-on-steroids-business.
Pasagdi ra, na-injured ang utok.
By the way, it’s curious how the negotiations for the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao fight failed again.
After Bob Arum announced that Mayweather didn’t accept their deal before the July 16
deadline, Mayweather Jr.’s representative announced there really were no negotiations and that Arum was lying.
Eh?
They could have said that when Arum was telling the world they were negotiating for the Pacquiao vs. Mayweather fight.
I mean, that’s the best they can come up with? No negotiations really happened? When they’ve been saying it must be “60-40 in Floyd’s favor…it must be 14 days..”
I tell you, despite being in this business for quite some time I still can’t understand how boxing operates.
It’s as if the sport has a different set of logic and to understand it you have to…aw..aw…aw…shoulder....pop...
(mikelimpag@gmail.com)