Cole Hamels Pitches Two Games While Delirious from Poison Oak

The outdoors!  They’re extremely dangerous.

But whatever dangers the natural world has in store for us, we don’t even know what sort of enhanced threats exist on Roy Oswalt’s property.  It’d be easy to assume he’s got some sort of “Most Dangerous Game” scenario set up, where sexy teens on spring break from Oblivious Cliches University stumble onto his property and wind up being hunted by Lil Roy with an old-timey musket and a squad of vicious wolfhounds.

The fact of the matter is, though, that you don’t have to just make shit up about nature for its abundant toxicities to seep into your system from even the most abbreviated exposure.  And Cole Hamels, while fishing on Roy Oswalt’s property, fell directly into nature’s trap.

…

Let’s not be naive.  He was probably sunbathing.

"“I didn’t even know I was pitching. I didn’t focus on pitching. It was one of those things where every pitch I was like, ‘OK, I think I’m done.”"

Ha, ha, yeah.  One of those things.  We’ve all had those afternoons at work where the midday lull kicks in; but instead of getting a little drowsy, you teeter on the edge of death for a while, flop sweating and frequently collapsing into a heap while hallucinating that the Grim Reaper is asking you to sign a birthday card for Cassandra in HR while a snake crawls out of his mouth.

"“You’re ready to quit. It wasn’t because of my arm. It just hurt so bad. The sweat didn’t help. It was the most miserable three weeks of my life. I didn’t sleep for three weeks.”"

Kids, (Not that there should be any kids reading this blog.  But if you should see some around in the next few days, please run over to them and let them know this) this is a good example of when to call the trainer to let him you you are probably dying.  I feel like any manager worth his salt would tell you that is a trainer-worthy situation.  And Charlie Manuel was alive at a time when salt was habitually used as currency and people’s worth in it was an actual calculable number.

That said, here are Cole’s 2011 Pitching Numbers While Poisoned:  12 IP, 10 H, 2 ER, 4 BB, 7 SO, 2.45 ERA

Just saying.  There’s a lot of starting pitchers out there without the toxins of the mighty oak seering and bubbling their flesh whose number pale in comparison.