There is never a shortage of goofy injuries in baseball, the kind that make you shake your head and think: He hurt himself doing what?
Padres pitcher Mat Latos landed on the disabled list when he strained his side holding back a sneeze.
Ex-Braves pitcher John Smoltz burned his chest while ironing a shirt — that he happened to be wearing.
Ex-Orioles hurler Adam Eaton stabbed himself in the gut with a paring knife trying to open a CD when he was with the Padres.
And in what might be the goofiest injury of all time, ex-O's outfielder Marty Cordova fell asleep in a tanning bed, burned his face and missed a game after a doctor ordered him to stay out of the sunlight.
Which brings us to Brian Roberts, who this week copped to something that should make the Goofy Injury Hall of Fame.
That's because the Orioles' second baseman admitted he missed the last six days of the season with a concussion suffered when he struck out and — here comes the good part — whacked himself on the batting helmet with his bat.
"It's a lesson to myself, a lesson to the kids to not do that, no matter how frustrated you are," an embarrassed-looking Roberts said.
A lesson to the kids? I don't know, Brian. I'm guessing even a fourth-grader knows that smacking your head with a bat is a bad idea.
Roberts said he wasn't sure his headaches and lightheadedness were caused by his self-inflicted punishment. But he said it was the only thing he could think of because his symptoms developed the following morning.
Let's see … you smack your head with a 34-oz. Louisville Slugger and pretty soon it begins to hurt. Yeah, even without a medical degree, I'd say the two were related.
I'll tell you this: Roberts is a braver man than I am. Because if I hurt my head doing something goofy like that, there is no way I'd admit it.
Are you kidding? I'd make up some story about fighting off an armed intruder. Or taking on a bunch of bikers in a street fight.
I don't think I could stand in front of a room full of reporters and say: "Yep, beat myself over the head with a bat. Now I'll be happy to take your questions …"
If you're wondering how hard you have to whack yourself over the head with a bat to cause a concussion, the answer is: pretty darn hard.
Especially if you're wearing a batting helmet.
"He must've hit himself pretty good," said John Weingart, a neurosurgeon at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, when I called Wednesday.
Weingart hadn't heard about Roberts' injury, and he was kind enough not to crack up laughing as I explained what the second baseman had done to himself.
But when I asked Weingart if there was any way to measure the blow needed to cause a concussion — was Roberts whacking himself over the head like a man driving a tent peg into hardpan? — he demured.
"There's no absolute force that you have to use in order to cause a concussion," he said. "… It'll vary from person to person."
Oh. Bummer.
So Roberts ended his season on another down note — this after he'd missed most of the first half with a herniated disk in his back.
And the word is that neither manager Buck Showalter nor Roberts' teammates were thrilled to see their second baseman out of the lineup with such a silly injury.
But the good news is that the Orioles said Wednesday that Roberts' CT scan came back negative, meaning there was no evidence of anything else that would cause the headaches and dizziness.
Instead, he joins a select fraternity of ballplayers sidelined with some of the whackiest injuries in sports.
He joins Mariners infielder/outfielder Russell Branyan, who cut and bruised his toe when he overturned a coffee table while trying to close the curtains in his hotel room.
He joins Mets pitcher Mike Pelfrey, who missed a start with a stiff neck after falling asleep during a plane flight.
And he joins Hall of Fame infielder Wade Boggs, who missed a week's playing time with the Red Sox when he lost his balance putting on his cowboy boots and fell onto a couch.
The few, the proud, the klutzy.
kevin.cowherd@baltsun.com
Listen to Kevin Cowherd Tuesdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. with Jerry Coleman on Fox 1370 AM Sports.
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