I know there's a rational explanation for it, but it still baffles me how many players get injured playing baseball. Like, you swing a bat, you run, you throw a ball, and you catch it. wtf are they doing to get injured?
I know you're not really serious (are you ever?
) But I'll offer a few things that contribute.
1. The sheer number of games. There is no real recovery time once the season starts. It's a continuous 5-6 games a week for six months. Everybody gets tired, and tired players are more prone to injury.
2. The start-stop nature of the game, where everybody is standing around until the ball it pitched, followed - possibly - by a few seconds of intense, rapid movement. Intense strains are put on joints and ligaments, and often there are sudden changes of direction if a player guesses wrong and tries to correct.
3. There are numerous occurances of violent collisions. While seldom "intentional" like in football or hockey, they are still violent.
4. Like in most sports, the human body is not really built for what they are trying to do. Throwing a 95-100 mph fastball, or trying to twist the wrist and forearm on a 90 mph slider while maintaining pinpoint accuracy is not something that natural evolution has designed the human body to do. Hell just "swinging" a bat at a pro level pitch puts stresses on the arms and upper body down through the hips and into the legs. And missing the ball often hurts more than hitting it.
5. And oh, they should probably require pitchers to wear some kind of head protection, or more with those 100 mph liners coming off the bat at them.
Yeah, it's perhaps harder than it looks like from the comfort of your couch.
