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While the tabloids take the A-Rod Injurygate story into the inevitable, “What did the Yankees know and when did they know it?” phase, it seemed like as good a time as any to reminisce about some of the more notorious, tragic, and hilarious Yankee injuries of all time. Here’s my top five:
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↵5. Derek Jeter’s Shoulder -- 2003
↵In the first game of the 2003 season, Yanks vs. Jays in Toronto, Derek Jeter collides with a third-string catcher, Ken Huckaby, at third base and dislocates his shoulder, an injury that keeps him out the first six weeks of the season. Jeets proceeds to behave like a complete baby about the whole thing, despite the fact that Huckaby clearly was just hustling down the line to cover the base, displaying the same kind of hustle that Jeter has become famous for. When asked if Huckaby might have been trying to injure him, Jeter replied, “You’ll have to ask him about that.” Even more famously, when told that Huckaby had tried to call his cell to apologize and gotten no answer, Jeter said, “Why would he have MY cell number?”
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↵4. Keith Olbermann’s Mom’s Face -- 2000
↵Yes, this was not an injury to a Yankee, but it was caused by a Yankee, and it was a very famous and ridiculous injury indeed. Mired in possibly the worst case of the yips ever suffered by a baseball player (with all apologies to Rink Ankiel and Mark Wohlers), Chuck Knoblauch’s throws to first while fielding second base for the Yanks in the 2000 season increasingly progressed from errant to homie-couldn’t-hit-the-wide-side-of-a-Dead-Show. In a game against the White Sox in June of 2000, he sailed one about 20 feet over Tino Martinez’s head at first and well into the stands behind the first-base dugout, hitting an old lady right in the face. That lady turned out to be Marie Olbermann, mother of Keith Olbermann. The sportscaster was later summarily terse about his mother’s condition. "Her face is a little puffy and she expects a shiner,” he said. “Her eyeglasses were broken, as was her confidence in Knoblauch."
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↵3. Roger Maris’ Hand -- 1966
↵Maris suffered a string of injuries in New York following his home-run record-setting season in 1961, but the coup de grace was a hand injury that plagued him throughout the 1965 and 1966 seasons and earned him the scorn of the New York media, who labeled him a malingerer. Maris was traded to St. Louis after the close of the ’66 season, and only then was it discovered that he’d been playing with a misdiagnosed broken hand. Run out of town as a Yankee pariah, in fact he’d been heroically playing with the immense pain of a broken bone. Maris never got over his bitterness about the experience and his time in pinstripes.
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↵2. Wally Pipp’s Head -- 1925
↵According to legend, Yankee manager Miller Huggins noticed first baseman Wally Pipp taking some aspirin in the clubhouse one afternoon and asked him what the problem was. Pipp replied that he had a massive headache, and Huggins told him to take the day off, inserting the young Lou Gehrig onto the lineup card. Of course, Gehrig wouldn’t come off the lineup card for another 2,130 games. Most people have since decided that this story is complete malarkey, that Huggins had been meaning to give Gehrig the first-base job on that very day no matter what the condition of Pipp’s head. But like Ruth calling his home-run shot in the 1932 World Series, it’s a myth so often printed that it’s been elevated to the status of honorary fact.
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↵1. Mickey Mantle’s Knee -- 1951
↵A 19-year-old rookie playing in right field, the Mick almost collided with Joe DiMaggio on a pop-up hit by Willie Mays in the 1951 World Series. Legend has it that DiMaggio, who had never taken to his centerfield heir apparent, called Mantle off the ball at the last second, despite the fact that it appeared to be Mantle’s play. This caused Mantle to pull up short and catch his foot in a drain cover in the outfield. He went down instantly, and reporters would later write that it looked as if he’d been shot. As he tried to stand up, DiMaggio said, “Stay down, kid, stay down.” The torn cartilage he suffered that day would haunt Mantle for the rest of his career, giving him his trademark limp, air of tragic heroism and the constant pain that, according to him at least, was only soothed with oceans of beer.
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.