Pain

I'll admit now that I was always afraid of getting hurt in Little League.

I remember getting beaned once, but I think it stunned me more than anything - it was during one of my first years, so the pitch couldn't have been going more than 30 MPH. I also remember lining a ball down the line that hit the third baseman in the wrist and forced him out of the game (postscript: I later became friends with that kid in high school). But I was afraid of getting hit, and usually struck out against the kids who threw hard (or whatever qualifies as "hard" when you're in fourth grade) because I had one foot out of the box.

I guess my fears weren't completely unfounded - the sport may not be entrenched in violence like football, but if you watch baseball long enough you'll see a fair amount of injuries. Still, baseball's leisurely pace makes it even weirder to see those rare moments of pain forever frozen on cards.

Just ask Craig Biggio, whose 268th(!) career plunking set a new modern mark is immortalized on this strange Topps card - and one that takes the term "Record Breaker" to a whole new level.

For no particular reason, I had the idea to collect the most painful baseball cards into a single, garish post here tonight.

There (understandably) haven't been a lot of HPBs documented on cards over the years, but one notable exception is this classic Classic of Andre Dawson getting pulverized by a fastball - in true Hawk fashion, he somehow got up and charged the mound shortly after. 

I've always wondered if these guys know about their weirdly painful baseball cards, and what their reactions would be if they didn't.

What would poor Ryan Thompson say, for example, if you showed him a card of him writhing on the ground (presumably) after getting nailed by a pitch?

I collect cards of double plays and plays at the plate - two relatively common baseball events that have become far less violent in today's game.

You'll find a fair amount of said violence depicted on the cards I have in those mini-collections, and these are a couple that instantly came to mind - I really hope that anonymous Dodger didn't suffer any kind of spinal injury after getting overturned by The Kid.

I don't know what card has made the most appearances on this blog, but the famous '73 Topps Pat Corrales would definitely be in the running.

It's a perfect clash of so many different areas of cardboard weirdness - not the least of which being the Fergie Jenkins cameo! - and I show it again here because no discussion of painful baseball cards is complete without it.

John Smoltz's '96 Pinnacle card is a big batch of strange.

The front features a shot of him hitting, which explains why it took me a long time to even think of turning it over and finding the extra little easter egg of him yelping in pain on the back.

You could start a landfill with the number of Pacific Nolan Ryan sets out there - seriously, they seem to be in every dime box I find - but there's a number of weird photos in the set that prove ubiquity doesn't necessarily equal "bad."

Not the least of which is this one, featuring the Hall of Famer profusely bleeding all over a uniform that probably warranted a good run through the wash after the game.

But in the end, if you ask me "what's the most painful card ever made?"...well, I'd have to go with this one.

For starters, I still wonder how an image like this ever made it onto a baseball card - and I can't imagine it ever will again. I can only guess at what we're seeing here, but it looks to me the good folks at SP saw Pat Borders get clipped by a backswing, saw his head split open, saw the blood running down his cheek and chin, and finally said "yep, that's the one we're using." But maybe they knew what they were doing, because, with apologies to Mr. Borders, here I am talking about said baseball card 30 years later.

For all my fears of getting plunked or spiked in Little League, I guess, in hindsight, I didn't have it so bad - at least my pain wasn't printed for all to see in a pack of baseball cards.