There are injuries in sports that we regard as common, run-of-the-mill. They might indeed be severe, but they occur so frequently that we barely shrug when we learn of them. A running back makes a cut and tears a knee ligament. A pitcher’s fastball suddenly loses 10 mph; oh, no, he needs Tommy John surgery. A hockey player takes a stick blade to the mouth, and the price is seven of his teeth.
Then there are injuries in sports that, by the circumstances surrounding them, deserve to be preserved in the amber of posterity—tales of disabled-list stints and strings of DNPs that one would assume were apocryphal if the athletes themselves did not confirm their validity.