FanHouse Jeff Bennett

Jeff Bennett is notable for two reasons. First off, he's the unfortunate subject of the most unflattering photograph ever taken (see image right). Second, on Wednesday, he sucker-punched a dugout wall, broke his left fifth metacarpal, and returned to the mound to pitch another full inning.

The fracture didn't seem to adversely affect Bennett's performance. Which begs the question: how many times have you thought, "wow, I sure am glad I have a fifth metacarpal behind the pinky finger of my non-dominant hand! What a wonderful skeletal feature!" I never have. What a worthless bone.

Friday's Dugout is after the jump.

After giving up the go-ahead single to Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez on Wednesday, Atlanta Braves reliever Jeff Bennett punched a door near the dugout in anger, breaking his hand.

As self-inflicted injuries go, Bennett's broken hand wasn't quite as silly as Milton Bradley tearing his ACL while arguing with an umpire back in 2007 or Gus Frerotte head-butting a wall after a touchdown and missing the second half of a game in 1997. But, it was dumb nonetheless. And it landed Bennett on the 15-day disabled list.

After punching the wall, Bennett, seeing a bump already rising on his hand beneath his non-pitching pinky finger, pushed the broken bone back into place and trotted back out to the mound to face the Yankees in the seventh inning.

Jeff Bennett and Brian McCann swear they didn't mean to hit Alfonso Soriano in the face/hand during the second game of the Braves - Cubs series. Although, after getting the full-on broom treatment in Chicago and McCann getting beaned as well, it would not be surprising to hear them change their tone a little bit.

'Obviously we weren't trying to hit Soriano,' McCann said. 'But if they felt like they needed to get back, then we're even now and it's over.'

Bennett was shockingly confident too (basically saying he had Soriano K-balled).

'That's the last thing I wanted to do with a guy on second and with two strikes,' Bennett said. 'I mean, you've got him struck out. He always stands over the plate and dives over it a little bit. If you look over his [scouting report], he'll swing at that high fastball. That's what I wanted to do. It didn't work out that way.'

What he fails to mention is that he was all over the place all evening; as long as you can classify "all evening" as "hanging around long enough to cough up seven runs in two innings". In other words, it's hard to even remotely classify this as intentional.

The interesting thing is that it feels like the Braves and Cubs are developing a little bit of bad blood (I don't want to use rivalry, lest the in-House Blue Bleeders point out the one-sidedness of it) between the two teams. Or perhaps a tough fought sweep combined with 100 years of frustration are just blending together.

If you're going to get "beaned," this is probably the best way to do it: I'm not sure Jeff Bennett's pitch even touched Jason Michaels, it just ripped open his jersey. Watching the replay, I'm surprised he didn't need to fetch a needle and thread at first base to sew back on a few buttons.

(via, of course, Uni Watch)