Player: Jose Cardenal, outfielder, Chicago Cubs
Reason(s): Couldn’t blink and couldn’t sleep.
Jose Cardenal was known for being a scrappy hitter with speed. For his career, Cardenal stole 329 bases, averaging about 26 SB in a 162-game season. In all, in 18 big league seasons, Cardenal played in 2017 games.
That number could very well have been 2019, but unfortunately, Cardenal missed two games in his career for utterly ridiculous reasons. the first of which was not being able to blink.
True story.
You might be wondering if the “injury?” occurred while performing baseball activities. You know, like maybe taking a ball to the eye or getting dirt in your eye while sliding into a base?
No! Apparently, Cardenal was removed from the 1974 Opening Day lineup because he slept funny and could not blink. According to the Washington Post, Cardenal swore that his eyes were “stuck open.”
It gets worse. Two years earlier, in 1972, his first season with the Cubs, Jose Cardenal missed a game because he couldn’t sleep. You can’t make this up. According to that same piece in the Washington Post, Cardenal claimed that crickets somehow made their way into his hotel room and chirped so loud through the night that the speedy outfielder couldn’t sleep.