As Sports Injuries Go, These Are a Cut Above

They say things come in threes, and so it was recently with a spate of wacky injuries, beginning with Plaxico Burress shooting himself in the leg at a nightclub. That inspired Derrick Rose to bring a dangerous object to an inappropriate venue; the Bulls rookie cut his arm with a knife he just happened to have left in his bed. Not to be outdone, Joe Sakic injured several fingers by -- and it's just delicious that a member of the Avalanche would do this -- reaching into a snow blower. But, in this space, things come in fives, such as the top answers to our question: Which athlete has suffered the wackiest injury?

Chris Hanson

And you thought it was only high school freshmen who apply painfully excessive doses of Axe. Well, those heavily lathered would-be lotharios have nothing on this punter, who literally applied an ax to himself in 2003.

Hanson was with the Jaguars at the time, and Coach Jack Del Rio had decided on a sure-fire motivational ploy for his team, which had gotten off to a poor start. To illustrate his new mantra, "Keep chopping wood," Del Rio put a block of wood with an ax in it in the middle of the locker room.

Apparently, the coach was unaware that locker rooms have been the site of many of sports' nuttiest mishaps, such as when Sammy Sosa suffered crippling back spasms after sneezing, or when Vince Coleman injured Dwight Gooden while practicing his golf swing. But Del Rio certainly should have realized that Hanson was a wacky injury waiting to happen, considering that just one year before, the punter and a Jags teammate were badly burned when a fondue pot overturned.

Sure enough, Hanson grabbed the ax, took a swing at the wood and . . . well, let's just say that the motivational ploy worked, in the sense that Hanson found plenty of motivation to rush to the hospital, what with the gash in his right leg requiring stitches. That ended the punter's season (turns out that legs are remarkably important to players in that specialty), but it began his new life as a punch line. These days, Hanson is booting balls for New England and, one can safely assume, wincing harder than any defensive end at the term "chop block."

Gus Frerotte

Just another case of the immovable object meeting the incomprehensible force. With the Redskins in 1997, Frerotte's voluntary head-butt of a stadium wall gave him a sprained neck that sent him to the hospital rather than out on the field for the second half of an important game. The incident has followed the quarterback everywhere he has gone, which is saying a lot, given that Frerotte has gone on to play for Detroit, Denver, Cincinnati, Miami, St. Louis and Minnesota.

Bill Gramatica

Anyone who understands the passion for soccer in Argentina knows that folks there get way more excited about kicking things than we do here. So maybe that explains why, in 2001, this Argentine got so worked up about hitting a first-quarter field goal for the 5-7 Cardinals that he leaped high in the air, pumping his fist. Unfortunately, upon returning to Earth, Gramatica ruptured an ACL. Hey, that never happened to Maradona!

Glenallen Hill

If it's been written once in the Sports pages of The Washington Post, it's been written a thousand times: Arachnophobia and sleepwalking just don't mix. Actually, when the former slugger had a terrifying dream about spiders in 1990, he didn't so much sleepwalk as sleep-run around his apartment and sleep-crash through a glass table. He showed up at the clubhouse the next day on crutches and with some 'splainin' to do.

Marty Cordova

Hill's problems began when he got out of bed, whereas Cordova's 2002 embarrassment stemmed from staying in a bed too long. A tanning bed, to be precise, because everyone knows that baseball players simply don't get enough sun. Cordova suffered burns to his face and had people less concerned with his melanin than what was going on in his melon.