If Only Carlos Quentin Wore a Wrist Guard

Towards the end of Bull Durham, Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis drinks a little too much and instigates a fight between himself and Tim Robbins’ Nuke LaLoosh.  Crash gets in Nuke’s face and Nuke responds by throwing a punch.  After going down, Crash questions whether LaLoosh hit him with his left or right hand.  Nuke questioningly responds: “left.”  Crash says, “Good! That’s good; when you get in a fight with a drunk you don’t hit him with your pitching hand. God, I can’t keep giving you these free lessons so quit screwin’ around and help me up.”  Apparently, Carlos Quentin never saw the movie.    According to the AP, Quentin, who leads the American League with 36 home runs, broke his wrist on Monday, September 1.  While facing twenty game winner, Cliff Lee, a frustrated Quentin fouled a pitch off and punched his bat.  He will more than likely undergo season ending surgery on September 8. Brilliant.

The Chicago slugger is not the first—and certainly will not be the last—to injure himself in extraordinary fashion.  In fact, the innocuous slap of a bat cannot compare to some of the more ludicrous injuries that litter the landscape of baseball history.  Sammy Sosa once went on the 15 day DL because of a sneezing fit.  Kevin Mitchell broke a rib vomiting.  John Smoltz burned himself when he tried to iron a shirt that he happened to be wearing.  Arachnophobic outfielder Glenallen Hill fell through a glass table trying to avoid spiders he had dreamed up.  Cardinals’ catcher Mike Matheny severed tendons and nerves in his hand on a hunting knife he received as a gift.  And no situation compares to the cause of Flint Rhem’s absence from the Cardinals’ 1930 pennant race.  Rhem claimed that he had been kidnapped by gamblers and forced to drink boot-leg whiskey for two days.

However, what makes Quentin’s injury so galling is that it was not a freak accident.  It was the result of a silly explosion of frustration.  Prior to the injury, Quentin had been the most productive member of the White Sox offense, leading the team in homeruns, runs batted in, runs scored, and OPS.  Certainly, the Sox would not be competing for supremacy in the A.L. Central without him.  In close and late situations, the injured left fielder hit .351 with 8 homers and 20 RBI.  With a man on third and less than two outs, Quentin provided a .393 average and 32 RBI.  Now the White Sox will have to fight tooth and nail to hold off the Twins without their offensive leader.  In one moment of frustration, Quentin may have simultaneously submarined my roto-team, the Flying Groin Kicks , and the playoff hopes of the Chicago White Sox.

With 162 games in baseball’s regular season, most players are vulnerable to injuries, bruises, strains, and pulls.  Why then do they still put themselves at further risk because they are unable to control themselves and their emotions?  Kevin Brown, on more than one occasion, broke his hand punching a wall in the clubhouse after a poor performance.  Jason Isringhausen did so when he punched a trash can in the dugout.  In July of this season, Khalil Greene busted his hand while hitting a storage chest.  David Wells was the king of the self inflicted injury.  Clearly, he never made a text-to-self connection with Bull Durham.  He broke his hand once when he hit a drunk in a bar fight and once when he missed the drunkand hit the wall behind his opponent.  In a New York diner, Wells was once punched in the face after making threats with a butter knife.  Finally, in 2004, Wells kicked a forty-pound barstool in his house, lost his balance, dropped and shattered a glass, and both lacerated his left hand and sliced a tendon in his right wrist on the broken glass.

Whether he is a flame-throwing reliever, a cagey veteran pitcher, a power happy slugger, or a spry middle infielder, much like an expert surgeon, the hands of a major league baseball player are his livelihood.  At what point will players realize that throwing punches against inanimate objects designed to support hundreds of thousands of pounds does more harm to them than the wall?  Baseball provides so many props that can be included in fits of rage.  Players have access to bats, balls, water coolers, helmets, gloves, shin guards, chest protectors, and sunflower seeds.  Why would a person ever punch a trash can when he could beat the hell out of a water cooler with a baseball bat and angrily spew sunflower seeds at the same time?  Is there anything more upsetting to a manager or a GM than losing a player because he couldn’t control his temper or keep his hands in his pockets?

The NBA and NFL run extensive rookie orientation programs for those players that lived in impoverished and violent environments.  These programs try to teach these men who came from very little how to deal with the pressures of their newfound fame and fortune.  Couldn’t the MLB run a similar anger management class for all of its rookies?  They could name it Don’t Punch Things .  In fact, if they could get a celebrity doctor like Dr. Drew to run the course, they could turn it into a reality show to be simulcast on MLB.TV and ESPN2.  Each week, we could watch a new anger-prone baseball player walk into Dr. Drew’s office (Milton Bradley would be a recurring character).  Dr. Drew could then try to teach alternative reactions to a tense situation, like hurling a bucket of balls onto the field. As a last resort, he could force the player to undergo the same programming that turned Sylvester Stallone’s character in Demolition Man from a murderous cop into a seamstress.  Danny Bonaduce could host.  Who wouldn’t watch that?