Indians' sacrifice to Jobu backfires as Yan Gomes injures shoulder
Cleveland Indians catcher Yan Gomes has been mired in a slump all season (his average hasn’t been over .200 since April), and on Saturday his faithful teammates staged a special ceremony to help him break out of it. They sacrificed a Target chicken (among other things) to Jobu, Pedro Cerrano’s voodoo doll from the movie Major League, and wrapped Gomes in a white sheet while they all blew on party horns.
It looked absolutely ridiculous, but it was all in good fun. They did it to show Gomes that his teammates were behind him during a tough time at the plate. Unfortunately, it may have backfired. On Sunday, a day after the clubhouse ceremony, Gomes left the Indians’ game against the Minnesota Twins in the fifth inning after taking a rough tumble over first base.
With one out in the inning, Gomes hit a ground ball to third base, and the throw pulled Twins first baseman Kennys Vargas off the bag. Vargas had to reach into Gomes’ path to tag him out, and the tag awkwardly clipped Gomes and he tripped on one leg before falling hard on the ground and rolling away. When Gomes fell, he landed on, well, everything. When he was first on the ground, he was holding his knee, but then he laid back and gripped his shoulder. He left the game, and the eventual diagnosis was a separated shoulder. Gomes described the injury to Paul Hoynes of Cleveland.com.
“The X-rays showed it’s a dislocated shoulder,” said Gomes, his right arm in a sling. “There is something sticking out of it right now.”
Ouch. That’s not good at all. Hoynes said that Gomes will be placed on the disabled list, and catcher Roberto Perez, who was rehabbing a broken thumb at AAA, will be recalled.
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The Indians definitely need to reexamine their ceremony to see what went wrong. Was it the Target chicken? The cardboard party noisemakers? Perhaps they dressed Gomes in the wrong kind of sheet? Hopefully they’ll figure out what their mistake was before they try it again, because Jobu is obviously very angry.
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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at [email protected] or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher
