![]() ![]() Four years later, during spring training in 1981, Rookie of the Year Joe Charboneau busted up HIS back sliding head first and his career more or less ended. Rick Manning, a childhood hero, busted up his back sliding head first in 1977, and he was never again the same player. The headfirst slide basically wrecked my childhood. ![]() ![]() Just cherry picking a few famous ones: Lenny Dykstra fractured his hand sliding head first in 1992. ![]() This nonsense goes back much further than that. Here is a New York Times story from 2003 that listed off big name players who were hurt sliding head first - Derek Jeter dislocated his shoulder, Kenny Lofton separates his shoulder, Manny Ramirez fractured his finger. Here is an MLB.com story from 2011 that listed off big name players who were hurt sliding head first - Josh Hamilton (this is a different one), Rafael Furcal, Yunel Escobar and Ryan Zimmerman (this is a different one too). How far back does this nonsense go? Well, h ere is a Fangraphs story from 2015 that listed off names of big name players who were hurt sliding head first - Bryce Harper, Josh Hamilton, Nolan Arenado, David Wright, Ian Kinsler, Ben Zobrist, Dustin Pedroia and so on. We’ve known for a long, long time that the headfirst dive in baseball is just plain dumb and dangerous … maybe this Trout injury is the thing to begin its banishment from the game. But the truth is we’ve been talking about this forever. There is a temptation anytime someone gets hurt, particularly on a routine play, to overreact. ![]()
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