FanHouse Denver

What's more popular than stupid baseball injuries? Nothing, really, unless you count baseballs to the groin, which aren't really enjoyable. Add Troy Tulowitzki to the list of players who have hurt themselves doing something stupid, as the Colorado Rockies shortstop is headed to the disabled list after hurting his hand while slamming a baseball bat in frustration.

After being taken out in the seventh inning as part of a double switch, Tulowitzki walked down to the dugout hallway and smashed a bat to the ground in frustration. The bat cracked in his right hand, causing a laceration that stretched from his palm to his index finger.

"I'm obviously sorry to my teammates because I feel like I'm letting them down more than anything, [and] the organization," Tulowitzki said. "Hopefully, it's not too long before I'm back out there, but it's hard to take."

Doh. That's why ... you never slam a baseball bat to the ground in frustration. They are, after all, still made of deadly, sharp and splinterable wood. And yes, palm --> index finger laceration does not sound particularly enjoyable either.

Tulo's injury kind of sums up the Rockies season pretty well though. Chock full of potential and expectations, only to be painfully overhyped once we realized what was going on.

Fantasy Spin: Tulo will hopefully only be out for a few weeks, but this kind of laceration seems like the type of thing that could end up really bugging him down the stretch, given that "hand" is one of those things that is generally considered useful when fielding a baseball and/or batting.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Florida Marlins (44-43) at Colorado Rockies (37-51) - 3:05 PM ET

As if 18-17 wasn't enough, the Rockies and Marlins played a 12-6 game proving once and for all that the humidor is dead Coors Field can still play host to some Nintendo games ... and that the Marlins pitching staff needs to step it up if they're going to hope to remain in contention for the N.L. East. The Marlins turn to Mark Hendrickson, who started out the season pitching like their ace but has been positively awful his last seven starts (37 earned runs in his last 34 innings). Not the guy you would expect to bounce you back from giving up 30 runs in two games. As for the Rockies, hey ... if they have another run in them, they're only six games back in the N.L. West so that division can still be had. Speaking of which ...

All this talk about Coors Field not being the offensive haven that it once was between the humidor and better Rockies pitching had to make some long for the days of nutso scores. For one night, and on July 4th of all nights, the old Coors made a grand return to the big stage as the Rockies defeated the Marlins ... ready ... 18-17.

The game featured the largest comeback in Rockies history, as they were once down in the game 13-4. It also included two dingers by Matt Holliday, one of which was a grannie in the seventh to cut the Marlins lead to 17-16. And it also included the latest blown save by Kevin Gregg in the ninth, his second in two nights, and fifth in his last 20 opportunities. Before the game, Fredi Gonzalez had said that Gregg was not in danger of losing his job. Maybe that has changed after tonight. I doubt it though ... heck, everyone was hitting tonight.

Marcus Nash was the Denver Broncos' first-round draft pick out of Tennessee in 1998, and while Nash was productive in college, the Broncos quickly learned that his college quarterback, Peyton Manning, could make any receiver look good. Nash was a bust in the NFL.

But he has caught on in Arena Football, where 2008 was his fifth consecutive 1,000-yard season.

Unfortunately, it will also apparently be his last. The Dallas Morning News reports that Nash, playing for the Dallas Desperados, underwent surgery this week to repair a broken neck suffered in last week's playoff loss to New York. According to the paper, Desperados coach Will McClay said the injury could end Nash's career.
Nash finished his NFL career with four catches. He was Arena Football's offensive player of the year in 2004.

Via PFT.

Everyone who follows the NFL knows that Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall can't stay out of trouble. But a Denver Post investigation reveals that Marshall's problems go beyond just his two arrests last year and his one this year.

For starters, police were called to domestic disputes between Marshall and his girlfriend three times in three months in 2007. In all three cases, the woman said Marshall punched her. Police made no arrests in any of the incidents.

His girlfriend's friend also told police that Marshall hit her car with his while the girlfriend was a passenger, then threw a rock at the car. Marshall wasn't arrested in that incident, either.

Marshall has also been charged with crimes including retail theft to assault on an officer, and his own father once told police Marshall shot a gun during an argument they had in a parking lot.

Looking at the totality of Marshall's rap sheet, it's reminiscent of Adam "Pacman" Jones: No individual incident was serious enough to put him behind bars, but the cumulative effect is likely enough for a lengthy suspension from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Via PFT.

Yesterday we brought you some of the conflicting stories concerning Brandon Marshall's March arrest for domestic violence. Marshall's denials ranged from the abject to the vague but overriding the whole thing was his assertion that he was the victim of a shakedown attempt and not a serial batterer of women.

Now, the attorney for Marshall's former girlfriend has fired back at the Bronco receiver.

"His story that he has been a victim is as pathetic as the story that he slipped on a McDonald's bag and injured his arm," David McGill, one of the two attorneys representing Rasheedah Watley, said Thursday night. "Hopefully, he will be as eager to tell his story in a court of law, under oath, as he has been in the media."

McGill also contradicted any notion that there was no physical abuse by saying that there was physical evidence to prove that part of his case. Marshall maintains that the only physical interaction was when Watley's sisters attacked him, causing a cut on his hand noted by police on the night in question.

In the Rocky Mountain News, Bernie Lincicome argues that it might be time for the Broncos to prepare a way out for Marshall.

Nothing he has done on the field or off the field would indicate he is more trouble than he is worth. Yet.

I think on the field trumps off the field in the NFL, which is why, short of a case of Pacman fever, Marshall will be with the Broncos this season.

We're still waiting for any fallout from the revelation that Brandon Marshall was arrested for the third time in 12 months in March but Marshall is going on the offensive against his accuser. He claims that Rasheedah Watley was trying to extort money and a car from him in exchange for keeping their affairs out of a courtroom. Her attorney emailed Harvey Steinberg, attorney for Marshall, and Steinberg provided details of the email to the Rocky Mountain News.

More than a year later, in an e-mail to Steinberg, O'Marra maintained that Marshall had offered to put Watley up in a furnished apartment for a year, get her a car comparable to her former BMW 645 and put $30,000 in her checking account, and that a settlement of $150,000 would be accepted. Five days later, that figure had shrunk to $100,000.

That was more than a year after a previous domestic violence charge against Marshall. When he refused to comply, Steinberg claims that the most recent charges, which he calls "unfounded," came to light. He also said the March incident was a figment of the imagination.

It's hard to believe that assertion. The Denver Post reports that when police were summoned to Marshall's home on March 4th, they found the receiver bleeding from a cut on his hand. Watley claims that Marshall found a text message from another man on her phone and beat her as a result.

One of the complaints about interleague baseball is that, with a few exceptions, the games are between teams with no historical rivalry which means less games between teams that do have such background to their meetings. On the surface this week's series between the Royals and the Rockies would fit the bill unless the thought of Clint Hurdle managing against the team he played against boils your potatoes.

Leave it to those two rapscallions, Ramon Ramirez and Yorvit Torrealba, to gin up some controversy where none existed. The Denver Post reports that the two players had a conversation before Ramirez walked Torrealba on four pitches in the ninth inning, a couple of which appeared to be in the general direction of the catcher's head and back.

Ramirez insisted afterward that the ball was wet from perspiration, saying "it slipped." Torrealba wasn't buying it. He said he was prepared for Ramirez to throw at him, though he wouldn't reveal why. "Ask him. It's all good," Torrealba said. "Every time I talk about stuff, I get fined or suspended."

Ramirez was traded by Colorado before the season and some Rockies said that he told them he was going to do some drilling when the two teams met. He pitched Monday and in the eighth inning on Tuesday without incident, however. We'll see if the two teams continue bucking for inclusion in our next edition of Old Boss, New Boss this evening.

Yesterday Brandon Marshall got himself dragged into an unsavory situation thanks to shoddy journalism. Today he's there because of his own actions. The Denver Post, via PFT, reports this morning that the Bronco receiver was arrested for misdemeanor battery in Atlanta on March 6th after a complaint from his girlfriend.

Rasheedah Watley, 24, filed an affidavit in Fulton County Magistrate Court on March 5 claiming that a day earlier Marshall hit her in the mouth and left eye, leaving her with, according to the criminal warrant, "visible marks above the eye and a laceration on her top and bottom lip.

It was the third arrest in less than a year for Marshall, the second for domestic violence and he's had a couple of other instances where charges weren't filed. No formal charges have been filed yet in this case, either. The arrest came 16 days before Marshall badly injured his arm in the McDonald's bag slip/wrestling match with his brother.

Marshall could face discipline from the league under the Personal Conduct Policy. The trifecta in one year would not work in his favor, and could face more of an issue if the arrests were concealed. Pacman Jones got in more trouble by hiding his run-ins with the law from the NFL. A spokesman for the NFL said they are looking into the arrest right now but didn't indicate when the league was made aware of it.

There's definitely a lot we still don't know about what led up to Javon Walker getting beaten up in Las Vegas early last week. His story about a random group of thugs accosting him seems fishy, to say the least, in light of his champagne spraying in the Body English nightclub earlier in the evening. Not knowing exactly what happened, however, doesn't mean we can just assume a course of events.

Norm Clarke, an eyepatch-wearing columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, is doing just that however in part of a column titled Latest Walker Twists.

And just when the story couldn't get any weirder -- on second thought, the hunch here is that it's going to get much wilder -- Walker's former Denver Broncos teammate Brandon Marshall showed up Friday at Tryst.

Clarke then mentions Marshall's role in the fracas that preceded Darrent Williams's murder in Denver last year. What Clarke doesn't deem worthy of mention is that there's no evidence placing Marshall with Walker at Body English nor any apparent connection between Marshall visiting a different club in the same city and what went down with Walker.

I fail to see how this makes the Walker story any weirder. Thousands of people went to clubs in Vegas on Friday night, are all of them somehow culpable in whatever befell Walker?