Kendrys Morales, Anaheim, Major League Baseball
For a moment Drue Tranquill must have been on top of the world. Last Saturday Notre Dame’s safety had just knocked a pass away from a Georgia Tech player in the end zone, breaking up a potential touchdown and he was filled with joy over the play. He leaped in the air. He bounced on the balls of his feet. He jumped excitedly to bump chests with a team-mate.
Then he tumbled to the turf. Somehow, in the middle of his chest bump his cleat caught on the grass, he lost his balance. His lower leg stayed in place as his body kept going forward. The anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee ripped. His season was done.
But Tranquill is not alone. There is a long list of athletes who have injured themselves in the moment of celebration. In some ways, it is surprising this doesn’t happen more given the way some players jump, scream and twist their bodies as they bask in the thrill of a good play. Take, for instance, baseball player Kendrys Morales. In 2010 Morales, then with the Anaheim Angels, slugged an early-season game-winning grand-slam against Seattle and because he had hit a game-winning, grand-slam he sprinted elatedly around the bases.
Baseball players in recent years have taken to treating game-winning hits as an occasion to break into impromptu rugby scrums. They rip each other’s uniform shirts, dump water on heads and generally act like frat boys deep into their third keg of the night. So perhaps if the Angels players weren’t jumping about near home plate as Morales circled the bases, he wouldn’t have felt compelled to leap into the air rather than simply touching the plate.
But he did. And when he landed, his foot slipped on home plate, and moments after gleefully rounding the bases he was being taken away in the back of a little white cart, his arms crossed across his face, hiding his agony. Morales missed the rest of the 2010 season and all of 2011 when he developed complications from the surgery on his leg. He returned in 2012 and hit 22 home runs. This year he has hit 21 for the Kansas City Royals. Presumably he has not jumped on home plate in celebration of any of those.
Gus Frerotte, Washington, NFL
Frerotte was never supposed to be an NFL star. Washington picked him in the seventh round of the 1994 draft, the same year they took Tennessee’s Heath Schuler in the first round. Schuler was supposed to be the franchise quarterback, Frerotte was a guy who could become a back-up. Maybe.
But when Schuler struggled and the team finally gave up trying to make him their leader, Frerotte became the quarterback to take them to the playoffs – which he did in 1996. He even went to the Pro Bowl. So maybe Frerotte still carried the euphoria of that breakout season into a 1997 home game against the New York Giants.
Late in the first half, with Washington near the goalline, he scrambled to his right and ducked into the end zone for the second rushing touchdown of his career. For a moment Frerotte didn’t appear to know exactly how to express his euphoria. He heaved the ball against the padding of the stadium wall right behind the end zone but that didn’t seem dramatic enough. He needed to do something more momentous. So he dropped his head and charged the wall like an angry, frothing rhino.
The wall won.
Frerotte looked stunned. He stood still then wobbled a bit. As he came back to the bench, his neck aching, coach Norv Turner asked him: “What happened?” Eventually Frerotte was taken to a nearby hospital for x-rays. The diagnosis was a sprained neck. He played the next week but his career stalled. He spent the next 11 seasons drifting around the league. He spent parts of a few years as a starter but was mostly a backup. His legacy forever sealed as the man who tried to headbutt a stadium wall and crunched his neck instead.
Paulo Diago, Servette, Swiss Super League
Diago would have been a forgettable player, lost in a series of transfers as he moved through Swiss football had he not done one very unforgettable thing nearly 11 years ago. Anyone who wears a ring might want to skip to the next player on this list. This is not one for the squeamish – which is why we bring it to you.
Diago had recently been married when Servette played at FC Schaffhausen on 5 December, 2004 and he was wearing his wedding ring as he played, obviously seeing no way in which the ring could be an impediment to a game. That is until he scored a goal in the 67th minute and he was so excited that he ran across the field, plunged through the photographers on the sideline and jumped onto a barrier that separated fans from players. He clutched the fencing for a few seconds, shaking it, screaming at the crowd before jumping down.
What Diago didn’t realize as he leaped is that his wedding ring had lodged in the screen. The weight of his falling body [warning: don’t click on this if you’ve just had your lunch] snapped his ring finger near the knuckle. The top half of the finger broke off and tumbled to the ground. He ran around in a frenzy again, this time howling with pain, holding up his hand now covered in blood and missing most of one finger. The match was stopped as players and coaches searched for his finger in the hope it could be reattached. The delay was so long, referee Florian Etter penalized Diago for an excessive celebration.
Doctors were unable to reattach the finger and recommended amputating the remaining stub. Two years later, he joined Schaffaussen, although with only nine fingers.
Fabian Espindola, Real Salt Lake, MLS
It’s one thing to rip off a finger while celebrating a goal – that almost makes sense. But imagine injuring yourself while celebrating a goal that didn’t even count. How do you explain that? Real Salt Lake star Fabian Espindola tried back in 2008 when he sprained his ankle scoring a goal against the Los Angeles Galaxy that was waved off long after he had already done a series of backflips across the middle of the field and then came up hobbling.
“This has never happened to me, I don’t know why it happened,” Espindola told the Deseret News of Salt Lake City about his injury at the time. “I’ve done it 1,000 times before I guess it had to happen sooner or later.”
The sad part is Espindola’s goal and the ensuing backflips were splendid. His goal came in the seventh minute, from such long-range that he is barely on screen. The broadcast also only caught a glimpse of him flipping again and again across the grass. But it’s the best glimpse because it captures the look on his face as he finally lands upright and elation turns to worry as he realizes he has done something very wrong.
To make matters worse, he still didn’t know the officials had disallowed the goal due to another player straying offside. Moments later Espindola was on the ground as trainers work on his leg. Soon after that he is shown on the bench with a towel over his face.
At first, doctors thought Espindola had broken his leg. But an MRI the next day showed the good news that his injury was only a sprain – much to his relief. Still, the sprained ankle kept him out for more than a month. Salt Lake released him not long after, before bringing him back the next April when he helped the team win an MLS championship.
Mariner Moose, Seattle, Major League Baseball
Most sports mascots dance or run or jump around. The Seattle Mariners’ is a moose that drives an all terrain vehicle. There’s a reason that moose don’t drive. The Mariners Moose cruises Safeco Field like a teenager in a souped-up Hyundai. Hijinks ensue, like in this 2007 collision with Red Sox outfielder CoCo Crisp. Yes, the Mariner Moose ran over a player named CoCo Crisp.
But the Moose is as fearless as he is reckless. His ATV act was born back in Seattle’s Kingdome where the field was not grass but artificial turf that more resembled a worn, green carpet stretched across a concrete floor. It was in the Dome where he perfected an act where he pretended to be water skiing behind the ATV. As someone else drove, the Moose wore roller blades and clutched a rope that was tied to the vehicle. He waved as he rolled around
Generally, his art was ignored. The Mariners were one of baseball’s worst franchises in the early 1990s and few people went to games in the dark, dreary Kingdome. But in 1995 Seattle baseball boomed. The Mariners found themselves in the playoffs for the first time and the Moose was suddenly in primetime. Between innings during Game 4 of a classic American League Championship Series against the Yankees, the Moose reveled in his team’s newfound success. He waved wildly to the crowd as he cruised the outfield.
So engrossed in celebration was the Moose that he never saw the left field wall fast approaching until it was too late. After the crash the Moose was sprawled prone on the warning track. The fans roared thinking his broken leg was part of the act. It was only after medics took him away that people realized the Moose was really hurt.
Being a good sport, the Moose showed up the next day, hobbling around on crutches that he eventually threw away. That’s the thing about moose. They are tougher than the rest of us.
Ron Hunter, basketball coach, Georgia State
For 20 years Hunter toiled anonymously as a coach at unheralded Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI in case that name is too much) and Georgia State, going to the NCAA Tournament only once. Last March, he found himself seconds away from his second NCAA appearance
But not only was it his second NCAA in two decades, he was coaching his son RJ, who was in his last college season. As the clock ticked down on the Sun Belt Conference championship, Hunter began jumping in the air in front of Georgia State’s bench. That’s when he felt his achilles.
Ron Hunter had torn his achilles before as a young player many years before. He knew what the injury like, the muscle rolling up the back of his leg, and he knew he had done the same thing once again, right at the greatest moment of his coaching career. There is a photo of Hunter right after his team has finished celebrating. He is sitting on Georgia State’s bench with his pants leg rolled up, holding his head in his hands.
And, of course as these things go, Georgia State upset Baylor in its first NCAA game. And, of course as these things go, RJ Hunter hit the game-winning shot, right at the buzzer. And, of course as these things go, Ron Hunter celebrated so hard the coach with the torn achilles fell out of his char.
This is what March Madness is all about.
