It hurts and it brands you as a dumbass!

Simply by referring to the law of probability, you'd think at least one professional baseball player per year would be injured on Opening Day, right? Men who have taken a winter off, have eased back into competition this spring and are now asked to perform on a professional level? Seems like a recipe for disaster.

Don't believe me? Check out CC Sabathia or Bartolo Colon. Then again, ask Rod Beck who once said, "I sure don't think of myself as a fat person, just someone who carries extra weight. I've never seen anyone on the DL with pulled fat." He's got a point.

Sabathia was hurt in his first outing, which places him ahead of Oakland's Bobby Crosby, who broke two ribs in batting practice before the opening game.

In no particular order (and subject to change if I remember/hear of a better injury) here are my Top 10 favorite baseball injuries.

10.) Jose Cardenal missed a game in 1972 after a sleepless night at the hotel. The cause? Excessive cricket chirping outside his window. Two years later, he refuses to pitch, claiming his eyelids are stuck open, leaving him unable to blink.

9.) Ken Griffey Jr. didn't always have serious injuries, like he's been plagued with since joining the Reds. No, once he missed a game when his protective cup slipped and pinched his testicle.

8.) Rickey Henderson missed a series of games after falling asleep on an ice pack and getting frostbite in August. Bonu points because I believe this was when he was in Oakland, too.

7.) Terry Mullholland sat out after scratching his eye on a pillow. He story is that a feather was sticking out and the base of it caught his eye the wrong way.

6.) Carlos Perez, a pticher, was hurt in a car accident (broken nose) as he was trying to pass the team bus. While I'm sure there's a better story here, I can't find it. Why wasn't he on the bus? Was he racing it at the time, showing off? I need to know this.

5.) Chicago's own Carlos Zambrano was told to knock it off with the web surfing. He was diagnosed with carpal tunnel after spending too much time on the Internet "e-mailing with his brother in Venezuela." Right.

4.) Mark Smith of the Orioles injured his hand when he stuck it into an air conditioner to see why it wasn't working. As I learned in first grade, Mark, "You see with your eyes, not with your hands..."

3.) Doc Gooden owed over $100K to his dealer... no, wait, different story. He was struck in the face with a golf club by Vince Coleman who was showing off his swing in the clubhouse.

2.) Karma pays Coleman back big time and forces him to miss the 1985 World Series after he was caught in the tarp machine as it was running.

1.) Glenallen Hill has the greatet single injury in the history of baseball. The highly arachnophobic Hill had a nightmare about spiders, began freaking out and in his semi-concious state crashed through a glass table. He then thrashed about in the broken glass trying to rid himself of the spiders.

(Photos from Reuters / Aaron Josefczyk; Thanks to these pages for helping me to nail down injury dates in some places. Oh, and ESPN, too.)