Have you seen my baseball?

There’s always that one kid. That one outcast who is doing his own thing while the rest of his friends are doing whatever is considered “in” at the time. We all know him. We all love him. But have you ever been him?\nI have.\nI’m that one kid who doesn’t really enjoy baseball. I’m that kid who doesn’t tie spring to spring training and summer to the regular season. I’m that kid.\nAll my fans have been asking me for a baseball column to kick off spring training, but I care for baseball about as much as I care for Mike Tyson’s SAT scores – fun to know about, but probably just bad.\nBefore you hop online to send me hate mail or quit reading this column, let me tell you that I’m a man for the people, and if baseball is what people want, then baseball is what they get, but on my terms (I mean, it is my column).\nSince I don’t follow the sport enough to give you an in-depth analysis of who is going to win the World Series or who has made the right off-season moves, I’ve got something more entertaining to tell you about. Dwyane Wade’s shenanigans have me all juiced up on injury stories, so I have some entertaining sports injuries from the baseball world.\nThese injuries are all real and most of them caused the players to sit out several games.\nIn the mid-80s Red Sox third baseman and Hall-of-Famer Wade Boggs sprained a muscle in his back when he fell trying to put on his cowboy boots.\nFormer Cub Sammy Sosa sat out with a hurt back caused by sneezing and hurt his shoulder from sleeping with bad pillow positioning. He missed several games for the sneeze and the Home Run Derby for the bad shoulder.\nIn 1995 Marlins pitcher Randy Veres suffered a swollen tendon in his pinky when he punched the headboard in his hotel room while trying to get the attention of his noisy neighbors.\nIn 1990 Blue Jays outfielder Glenallen Hill missed a game because of sleepwalking. Hill has arachnophobia and reportedly scraped his knees and elbows trying to get away from the imaginary spiders in his dreams.\nThese guys were good, but Brewers pitcher Steve Sparks takes the cake. In 1994 Sparks dislocated his shoulder tying to rip apart a telephone book after the team watched two guys do it in a performance. \nThe list goes on and on, but you can only have that “Really?” reaction so many times in one reading. So I’ll stop there and leave you with one last thought. It is clear that I’m not a hardcore baseball fan and that I’m much more of a basketball fan, but I can say one good thing about baseball and its ridiculous injuries.\nAt least these guys didn’t get taken off the field in a wheelchair.