The Minnesota Twins signed relief pitcher Joel Zumaya to a one-year, incentive-laden contract on Sunday. The reason that it's so incentive-laden is because Zumaya, to put it mildly, has a bit of an injury history. Not all of those injuries have been pitching-related, however.
In the months after the 2007 season, Zumaya injured his shoulder while helping his father move boxes out of his attic because a fire was approaching the area. A box weighing 50 or 60 pounds fell on his pitching shoulder, separating it and keeping him out until late June of 2008.
But the most infamous of Zumaya's injuries would have to be the one that sidelined him for the 2006 American League Championship Series with a sore wrist. The nature of the injury wasn't revealed at the time, but Detroit Tigers' General Manager Dave Dombrowski disclosed during an off-season interview that the source of Zumaya's injuries was. . .that he played too much of the PlayStation 2 game Guitar Hero, causing the injury to his wrist.
To his credit, the injury did get Zumaya a spot. . .sort of. . .in the XBox 360 version of Guitar Hero II, where the credits contained the following message:
No pitchers were harmed in the making of this game. Except for one. Joel Zumaya. He had it coming.
So maybe the best thing for Zumaya now that he's a member of the Twins would be to keep him away from the PlayStation and putting a clause in his contract prohibiting him from helping people move or something.