The Brewers have already had to deal with their fair share of bad luck this year. Corey Hart hurt his knee working out before spring training even began. Mat Gamel re-tore the ACL he tore last season during the team's first full-squad workout. Aramis Ramirez sprained his knee sliding into second base on a double. A few others have dealt with the soreness and bumps and bruises that come with the start of spring training.
You could say they're snakebit, but after what happened to GM Doug Melvin, it may be more appropriate to say they've been stung. Melvin was stung by a scorpion during dinner in his Arizona condo Wednesday night. Apparently, he saw what he thought was a bug crawling across the floor and tried to crush it with a tissue.
It turned out to be an Arizona bark scorpion, one of the 80 American scorpion species actually considered lethal. It stung him on his finger, his hand immediately swelled, and numbness got to his shoulder before he went to the ER, where he spent three hours.
Melvin is fine now, back to work Thursday morning. Which is good, because now it means we can joke about it. He's actually the second person with the Brewers to be stung by a scorpion in three years — reliever Zach Braddock, now in camp with Baltimore, missed time after getting stung during spring training in 2011.
If Melvin starts doing irrational things — like signing Kyle Lohse, or trying to trade Yovani Gallardo for some poutine — maybe we can start to worry again. Until then, it's probably just safe to assume he's picked up some superpowers, or possibly turned into Scorpion from Mortal Kombat.
[MLB.com]
