Oakland pitcher Rich Harden was put out of action when he strained his shoulder turning off his alarm clock, and Larry Bigbie missed a start for the Baltimore Orioles when he stubbed his toe in his hotel room.

Atlanta outfielder J.D. Drew missed three games after straining his neck while swimming in a friend’s pond, and Ryan Klesko of the Padres missed more than a week with a back strain he sustained when he stood for the national anthem.

When Richie Sexson played for Milwaukee he damaged a neck muscle stretching out a new cap, while former San Francisco Giant Chris Brown once begged out of a game because he “slept on his eye wrong.”

Strange as these injuries may seem, none of them can compare with the bizarre experience of Clarence Blethen, a rookie pitcher on the Red Sox team of 1923.  Blethen thought he looked more intimidating to the batters he faced if he took out his false teeth, stashing them in his hip pocket

 while he pitched.  Unfortunately, he forgot to put them back in his mouth when he left the mound. This explains how, after hitting a double and sliding into second base, Blethen became the only player in the history of major league baseball to be taken out of a game after biting himself in the rear.

Upon reflection, however, I realized that Blethen’s injury is not all that uncommon.  How many times have we all thoughtlessly made some cutting remark about an associate, some biting comment about an acquaintance, only to have it backfire and end up injuring us?  

In a powerful passage warning against gossip, dishonesty, and quarreling, the wise man Solomon warns that using our tongue to hurt others has a way of unexpectedly rebounding to injure us (Proverbs 26:27)!  And Paul warns us of the mutual destruction creating by back-biting and bickering when he says in Galatians 5:15, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.”

When it comes to the damage caused by careless speech, too many of our wounds are self-inflicted. The Bible warns us to avoid the sin of back-biting, because if we don't, the "back" we "bite" might be our own!

–Dan Williams

College Avenue

Church of Christ