The Hooker’s Extra Tooth

It should be pointed out that fringe sports are not for the feint of heart. They might be random and obscure, but they can also beat the hell out of participants. If you don’t believe me, take a look at some of these stories and studies.

Although its credibility as a sport is highly suspect, juggling has a surprisingly high rate of injury. Over 70% of jugglers are injured doing it. This, to me, is amazing. Do you think that old jugglers walk with a limp or noticeable lack of mobility, like old NFL players? Maybe the guys who juggle really big things – like bowling balls or moose skulls – end up with a lot of concussions. Can you imagine trying to hold a conversation with an overly concussed, octogenarian retired juggler? That’s gotta be somewhere around the 5th or 6th level of hell.

Not as surprising, however, is the fear of injuries in competitive eating. Some doctors hypothesize that too much eating could lead to a torn esophagus. Food could leak out of the tear and cause infection. This, however, is predicated on the assumption that over eating competitively could lead to vomiting eventually. Competitive eaters, however, insist vomiting is rare. Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, though, admitted to having to make numerous trips to the bathroom after devouring 11 pounds of cheesecake in 10 minutes. But come on, seriously – after consuming 11 pounds of cheesecake in any time frame shorter than a year and a half, bathroom breaks are the least of your worries.

Rugby, though, easily wins the award (fictitious, though it may be) for most dangerous, injury prone fringe sport. Rugby produces some messed up players, and it produces a lot of them. However, my favorite is the hooker with the extra tooth. Shane Millard, a hooker (it’s a rugby position, pervert) for the Widnes Vikings, had an opponent’s broken tooth stuck in his head after a game. Doctors had to douse it with saline solution in order to remove it.

Millard’s injury, believe it or not, is not unique, nor even the most severe example of players depositing teeth into the bank of another player’s skin. Jaime Ainscough found St. Helens center Martin Gleeson’s tooth embedded in his arm several weeks after a game. By that point it was so badly infected he was in danger of losing the arm. However, because rugby players are tougher than any other human beings on the planet, he returned to play by the end of the season. In Spanish that’s called “cajones muy grandes.”