Time for the annual Spring Training injury scare

In an ideal world players during Spring Training would take the field padded with bubble wrap, or use wiffle balls instead of baseballs, or better yet, no ball at all. Other than the absurd, there’s not much a baseball team can do to protect themselves from the unexpected bite of mortality. Players drop weights on their toes, get handsy with the wrong end of a butter knife while making a sandwich in the clubhouse kitchen, stand up too quickly, sneeze too violently—we live in a dangerous world and every March, the baseball constituency is reminded of a season’s fragility.

As much as the facilities in Arizona are designed to look like country clubs and desert resorts, spring training is a…