Clint Barmes seemed on target for an NL Rookie of the Year award this year, but after breaking his collarbone, an injury expected to keep him out three months, he'll have to settle for a JKWWMD Award. Maybe he was shooting for one the whole time: they are rarer and more prestigious after all. The guy seems to be working overtime embellishing the story behind the incident, thereby ensuring enshrinement in the Darwinian Hall.

Initially, the story went that Barmes had fallen in his home carrying groceries thereby causing the injury.

"Obviously, accidents happen… I figured, I'm an athlete, I can walk up the stairs, it's not that big a deal," Barmes said in an interview Monday, his left arm hanging in a sling. "Obviously, if I had to go back, I would have waited, or at least been a bit more careful going up."

But then the story got kind of complicated. Let me say for the record that Barmes had me at Hello—groceries gamboling causing a collarbone catastrophe? Holy gamboling, Barme-man! Actually, I think with a name like Barmes, it has to be good. No, wait, with a name like Barmes, which sounds too close to some odd Benny Hill expletive, he was halfway to a JKWWMDA the day he stepped into a major-league clubhouse.

Anyway, next he changed the story to a package of deer meat from teammate Todd Helton as the culprit of the fall. I guess that sounded more manly (Quien es mas macho?). He was evidently covering for Todd or maybe the deer, "I just didn't think it was right to bring Todd Helton into something like this."

Something like what? He fell right? Did Helton burst his eardrum causing his equilibrium to go haywire?

Well, the real culprit might have been the all-terrain vehicles that Helton and Barmes were riding that day. But Helton gainsays such talk:

"I cannot say it strongly enough -- he did not get hurt riding an ATV," Helton said. "I was there. He never left my eyesight the entire time."

Methinks they dost protest too much. Even though nothing in Barmes' contract bars ATVs. Doesn't the mutual behind-covering seem a bit excessive? Enquiring minds want to know!

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