Alcides Escobar Misses Spring Training Game With Bug Bite

By now, we all understand that weird injuries in sports cannot be avoided.  Over the years, we’ve featured stories about tennis players hurting their hands playing Playstation, photographers injuring football players, and countless weird baseball injuries that seem inexplicable. On Sunday, Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar brought us our first ever bug bite injury.

As the Kansas City Star pointed out, via Ben Maller, Escobar was scratched from the Royals lineup on Sunday because of an infection on his arm that stemmed from a bug bite. Kansas City manager Ned Yost said the bite became infected when Escobar scratched it, and he now has “red streaks (up his arm) and it’s swollen and warm.” Escobar has been given an antibiotic that should clear the infection up.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks.  It’s important to note that the “injury” was suffered during spring training, so there’s no telling whether or not something like this would have caused Escobar to miss time during the regular season.  In any event, maybe this will teach him to stop scratching and leave his bites alone. My mother always told me not to scratch.