32 Ignominious Bits of Trivia About Unfortunate or Embarrassing Athletes

And we thought actors were eccentric!
32 Ignominious Bits of Trivia About Unfortunate or Embarrassing Athletes

We honestly thought that this kind of behavior was exclusive to Hollywood, but it looks like some of it seeped out into stadiums and arenas around the world. These wild and eccentric sports figures got all kinds of nutty and pulled some stuff that definitely won’t end up on their stat sheets.

Their rap sheets, maybe, but “stomping legs with skates on” probably isn’t on the back of Chris Simon’s hockey card.

Malice at the Palace

The Malice at the Palace CRACKED.COM In 2004, a late-game fight between players on the Pistons and the Pacers turned into a full-team brawl. That's rare enough in the NBA, but then a fan hucked a beer at Ron Artest, and the carnage spilled into the bleachers.

The Boston Bruins

The Bruins team up on a Rangers fan CRACKED.COM When a spectator reached over the glass and whapped a Bruins player with a rolled up magazine, the entire team retaliated. They hopped the barrier one by one and beat the tar out of the magazine guy and anyone who came to his aid.

William Hayes

GRACKED DINOSAURS AREN'T REAL WILLIAM HAYES gs 95 The Rams defensive end thinks it's crazy to think that dinosaurs ever existed. Не believes that archaeologists planted bones underground like Easter eggs.

Bryce Mitchell

GRACKED GRAVITY IS A LIE BRYCE MITCHELL The UFC fighter thinks that the world is flat and that gravity doesn't exist. This paper, when it drops it's because it's more dense than the world around it, not because of some magical thing called gravity, he said in a rant.

Carlos Roa

CRACKED Carlos Roa quit for apocalypse prep. The goalkeeper was offered $10 million to play for Manchester United in 1999, but with the new millennium approaching, he announced his retirement so he could go prepare for the end of the world.

Shin A-lam

If you challenge a ruling, you can't leave the court FENCING www. allst CRACKED.COM When Shin A-lam contested a controversial call at the 2012 Olympics, she was forced to stand on the piste while the call was reviewed, which took 75 minutes. She was essentialy forced to filibuster for a fair call, and was ultimately dragged off by security.

Eddie Gaedel

Eddie Gaedel St. Louis Browns CRACKED.COM In 1951, Browns owner Bill Veeck hired the 3'7 performer for exactly one at-bat, in order to present an impossibly small strike zone and get a guaranteed walk. The ump called shenanigans, but they had the contract on-hand, so it was all technically legit.

Rick Mirer

Rick Mirer Seattle Seahawks CRACKED COM Mirer's 1993 contract explicitly stated that nothing could keep him from getting that bread, up to and including the end of the world.

Rougned Odor

Rougned Odor Texas Rangers TEXAS CRACKED.COM When your contract is already just shy of $50 million, you have to get creative with added incentives. The Rangers threw in a bonus of two horses to sweeten the deal.

Manny Ramirez

Manny Ramirez Shikoku Island League Plus BOS TON Winn 71 CRACKED.COM When Ramirez went to play ball in Japan in 2017, he had two particularly odd demands: that he could skip practice whenever he wanted, and that he'd be given unlimited sushi.

Charlie Kerfeld

Charlie Kerfeld Houston Astros CRACKED.COM Kerfeld wore number 37, and wanted everyone to know it: he requested a one-year salary of $110,037.37, and 37 boxes of orange Jell-O.

Troy Glaus

Troy Glaus Arizona Diamondbacks CRACKED COM On top of his $45 million contract, the Diamondbacks agreed to toss a quarter- million dollars at his wife's horse hobby.

Roy Oswalt

Roy Oswalt Houston Astros GRACKED COM In 2005, Oswalt's contract said that if the team won the National League championship, he'd get a frickin' bulldozer. That seemed to be enough incentive for him, because the Astros won the NCLS and Oswalt got his dozer.

Stefan Schwartz

Stefan Schwartz Sunderland A.F.C. ILTY was CRACKED.COM Schwartz had such famous a preoccupation with space and space travel, the team stipulated that he must remain on Earth for the contract to remain valid.

Rollie Fingers

Rollie Fingers Oakland Athletics CRACKED.COM Fingers had recently won a team mustache-growing contest, so in his contract extension, he stipulated that he'd be provided the finest mustache wax money could buy.

George Brett

George Brett Kansas City Royals Royals CRACKED.COM In order to finish out his career with the Royals, Brett requested the team return the infamous pine tar bat. The year before, he'd had a game-winning homerun called back because he was deemed to be using an illegal amount of pine tar on his bat.

Spencer Prior

Spencer Prior Cardiff City F.C. CRACKED.COM The team owner snuck in a clause that stated Prior had to eat sheep testicles before games (a weird, but legit tradition) and had to have physical liaisons with sheep (a weird, and wholly unnecessary dig at the Welsh).

Eric Cantona

Eric Cantona 8 MONTHS CANTE I CRACKED.COM NEWERD Не was nearly jailed for a well-executed kung-fu kick to a heckler as he was being ejected from a game, but wound up with 120 hours of community service instead. In a presser after the game, he explained his actions by saying When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in the sea. Thank you very much.

Mariano Puerta

Mariano Puerta 8 YEARS CRACKED.COM After his runner-up finish at the 2005 French Open, Puerta tested positive for a heart stimulant. Не says it was his wife's heart stimulant, which he'd clumsily slurped down when he reused her glass. To his credit, the amount detected was too small to have any effect on his performance, so his ban was shortened to 2 years.

Marty McSorley

Marty McSorley THE REST OF THE SEASON 29 CRACKED.COM In 2000, McSorley whapped an opponent in the head from behind, causing a severe concussion, and was later found guilty of assault with a weapon. Не wasn't the first player to go to court for in-game violence, but the last time it happened, in 1988, the NHL didn't find it necessary to actually suspend the guy on trial.

Merle Hapes

Merle Hapes LIFETIME BAN CRACKED.COM In 1946, the Mayor of New York confronted two Giants players about a bribery scheme to throw the NFL Championship Game. Neither Hapes nor teammate Frank Filchock actually took a bribe, but Hapes made the mistake of admitting that it was offered. For his honesty, he was banned from the league for life.

The Black Sox

The Black Sox LIFETIME BAN ALL PHOTOS Q UNDERWOOD UN2L KNOWN- EDDIE CICOTTE FRED Gwm CLAUDE WILLIAMS Mc MULLIN RISBERG BUCK WEAVER EIGHT MEN CHARGED WITH SELLING OUT BASEB CRACKED.COM Eight players on the 1919 Chicago White Sox were cleverly dubbed The Black Sox after it was alleged they were paid to take a dive in the World Series.

Billy Coutu

Billy Coutu LIFETIME BAN CRACKED.COM In the middle of the 1927 Stanley Cup Finals, Coutu's coach allegedly told him to go start a fight. The Wild Beaver artfully orchestrated the brawl by... beating the sh* out of two referees. He's still the only NHL player ever banned from the league for life.

Guillermo Mota

Guillermo Mota 100 GAMES CRACKED.COM Mota was the first MLB player hit with a mandatory minimum 100-game ban for doping. His agent said the substance detected was really just children's cough medicine... which might have been believable, had this not been his second offense.

Latrell Sprewell

Latrell Sprewell BA RANK 68 GAMES 1ST TS 9TH 5TH STLS CRACKED.COM Sprewell was benched after choking out his coach, being sent to the locker room, and then coming back to punch him one last time. The Warriors, understandably, tried to fire him, but he somehow won an arbitration battle. All the team could do was trade him off to the Knicks.

Viktor Troicki

Viktor Troicki 18 MONTHS prin CRACKED.COM By all accounts, the tennis pro just forgot to provide a blood sample to the Monte-Carlo Masters tournament, and was hit with the year-and-a-half ban. Не had no prior history of doping, or avoiding doping tests.

Luis Suarez

Luis Suarez 1 YEAR CRACKED.COM Suarez is probably the only professional athlete with 3 distinct biting incidents on his Wikipedia page. His 3rd bite was his magnum opus: on an internationaly televised World Cup game, he chomped the shoulder of his opponent Giorgio Chiellini, then fell to the ground holding his face.

Plaxico Burress

Plaxico Burress UNTIL НЕ LEARNED HIS LESSON GRAGKED.COM Burress, famously, shot himself in the leg when he brought a gun to a nightclub, nestled securely in his wasteband. Не spent 2 years in jail, and was... somewhat performatively banned by the NFL during that time. Не got right back to work after he got out.

Adam Jones

Adam Jones 1 SEASON CRACKED.COM Jones missed a whole season because of one really bad night at a strip club in 2007: he allegedly attacked a dancer and threatened a security guard.

Myles Garrett

Myles Garrett THE REST OF THE SEASON 2 CRACKED.COM In 2019, Garrett was suspended indefinitely -- though he returned to the field the next season - for taking off the opposing quarterback's helmet and bludgeoning him with it.

Art Folz

Art Folz LIFETIME BAN CRACKED.COM In 1925, he supposedly tricked a local high school football team into playing against the Chicago Cardinals, in order to beef up their record to make the 1925 NFL Championship.

Chris Simon

Chris Simon 65 GAMES TOTAL 17 CRACKED.COM This guy was the real-life Happy Gilmore. Не was once suspended for taking a baseball swing at Ryan Hollweg's face, and another time for stomping Jarkko Ruutu's leg with his skate.

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