Rich Hill tried the grossest thing to get rid of his blister
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (and NLDS Game 1 starter) Rich Hill has struggled with blisters on his pitching hand all season. He just couldn’t get rid of them, and in an “I’ll do anything!” moment, he tried an unorthodox (and really gross) treatment: he urinated on them.
That’s right. Rich Hill peed on his blisters to get rid of them. Here’s what he told USA Today’s For The Win:
“You pee on it,” Hill said Thursday at Nationals Park. “You might as well try it, right? I was desperate to do anything at that time.”
I’d say peeing on your hand definitely qualifies as the action of a desperate man.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about this ritual in major league baseball, which is done to toughen up the skin on their hands and get rid of callouses. Moises Alou is a famous practitioner of hand-urinating, and both Kerry Wood and Jorge Posada have admitted to doing it while they were playing.
Though several players have done this to both toughen up their hands and eliminate callouses, it can’t really do both. Urea, a chemical found in urine, is used in many commercial moisturizers as a skin softener. (Never fear: the urea in your lotion was created in a lab and is not from anyone’s toilet.) So while peeing on your hands a lot could help soften them up enough to get rid of a callouses, it probably won’t toughen them up to prevent more callouses from forming.
Hill (thankfully) didn’t elaborate on whether he tried this unorthodox callous removal method just once or more often, but he did find one thing that helped.
“…the only thing (to heal it) is time, especially with the blister that I had.”
That seems a lot more sanitary, doesn’t it?
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Liz Roscher is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email her at lizroscher@yahoo.com or follow her on twitter! Follow @lizroscher
