Spencer Torkelson and Ridiculous Baseball Injuries

Detroit Tigers prospects like Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson are so skilled and physically impressive it can sometimes be easy to forget how young they still are. Torkelson was six when the first iPhone was released. Greene can’t drink legally for another seven months.

Young people make a lot of poor decisions. They aren’t the only ones who make poor decisions, of course, but they are really quite adept at screwing up. I say this as both the parent of a teenager, and as a recovering teenager myself.

And so it is that Spencer Torkelson, probably the single most exciting player in Detroit Tigers camp right now, has taken himself out of spring training action for about a week. He didn’t get hurt on the field, and he wasn’t being irresponsible and getting into bar fights.

Spencer Torkelson tried to open a can without a can opener.

Young people strike again. Chris McCosky offers the details:

"According to two sources familiar with the incident, Torkelson was making dinner at a house he shares with Jake Rogers and Riley Greene. They didn’t have a can opener in the house so he tried to improvise with a wine opener that had a serrated, half-inch knife on the other end. The knife folded up on him, making a half-inch cut in the index finger. He took three stitches to close the wound. No muscle or tendons were affected."

It’s a perfectly understandable incident, and almost quaint in a way. It’s nice Spencer Torkelson still acts like a dumb kid and hasn’t has his hands insured by Lloyd’s of London. He even made fun of himself on Twitter.

In the end this little injury won’t matter too much. Spencer Torkelson should be back swinging the bat and fielding grounders in a week or two, and presumably he’ll be a bit more careful around sharp objects.

But this incident did remind us of a few more ridiculous injuries to baseball players. Hit the jump to read about them.