Chicago Cubs manager Dale Sveum answers questions during a news conference at the baseball winter meetings Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2012, in Nashville, Tenn.
Cue the Dick Cheney jokes: Chicago Cubs manager Dale Sveum has been shot. Accidentally. By his friend. While quail hunting. Sound familiar?
The Chicago Tribune reported that Sveum’s longtime pal and former Milwaukee Brewers teammate Robin Yount unintentionally shot him in the back with BB pellets during a recent quail hunting trip in Arizona. Sveum shrugged off the unfortunate incident at baseball’s winter meetings on Tuesday.
Sveum told the Tribune that he was walking about 50 yards behind his friend on a hill when Yount got confused and shot at a bird directly behind Sveum.
“The bird got up in front of him, and he lost track of where I was and pulled the trigger,” Sveum explained, according to the Associated Press.
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“He pulled the trigger, and I was like, ‘Uh oh,’” Sveum reportedly said. “Luckily I was just kind of climbing, looking for birds myself when it was behind me. So I got drilled with pellets in the back and one stuck in my ear.”
The Cubs manager said he had to endure a “bloody” removal of the BB from his ear, but he wasn’t worried about the apparently minor injuries.
“It’s not that big a deal,” Sveum insisted, adding that his friend did, in fact, hit the bird as well.
Plus, Sveum now has the Cheney joke market cornered: he has already started referring to Yount by the former vice president’s name.
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