Athletes Who Were Tragically Injured During The Height Of Their Careers

Highly paid athletes are typically willing to put themselves through punishing ordeals to entertain and excite us. Unfortunately, the body has its limits, and hair-raising injuries are all too common in most sports.

While it is expected that some players will sit out a few games due to accidents, in a few famous cases a small slip-up, an awkward collision, or a bad fall has ended an athlete's entire career. Bad sports injuries come in all shapes and sizes — and range from the heart-breaking to the grotesque. Many mighty athletes have been felled by a simple twist of a knee or a fractured foot. In extreme cases, spinal injuries and blows to the head have sometimes resulted in devastating tragedies, which have affected players' entire lives well beyond the stadium grounds.

From baseball players to boxers, these stars were never played quite as well again, or else bowed out of sports completely. Some rose to the challenge and carried on with their lives, while others struggled. Discover who lost their jobs, their talents, and their fortunes, thanks to broken bones and worse.

Buffalo Bills football star Kevin Everett had a catastrophic accident in 2007, which was among the worst in recent sporting history, as described by Scientific American. At the age of just 26, Everett's career came to an end, in a terrible accident that almost destroyed his entire body.

Everett was playing the Denver Broncos when he ran into another player, smacking his helmet against theirs, and the force of the impact sent shockwaves down Everett's spine, brutally crushing his vertebrae. Completely unable to move, Everett was paralyzed from the neck down. The Buffalo Bills' official site reports that the Bronco who crashed into him was also devastated when he heard the accident had changed Everett's life forever.

Thankfully, although Everett's spinal cord almost snapped, the use of a pioneering medical treatment gave him the use of his body back. Extremely cold ice water was used to cool his nervous system down in order to get it to recover. After a series of treatments as well as major surgery, Everett regained the use of his legs and was able to walk again. Today, he still has limited sensation in his hands, and he still mourns being unable to play the game that he loves.

The extremely charming and scarily talented all-rounder, Bo Jackson, had a devastatingly short career that was still incredible enough to give him a legendary reputation. Today the sports world has never quite gotten over the loss of Jackson, whose abilities were almost unmatched.

According to ESPN, Jackson's stunning ability was already obvious in high school, and he was almost signed to the New York Yankees at an extremely young age — however, he chose to play college football instead. After college, in 1986, he started playing Major League Baseball, but he didn't give up on football — one year later, he started a contract with the Los Angeles Raiders as well. He was the first person to ever play both professional football and baseball at the same time at such a high level.

Riding on a high from many successful matches and plenty of lucrative endorsements, just four years into his football career he was subject to a violent tackle that ended it all. ABC News Cincinnati recounts that while playing the Cincinnati Bengals in 1991, Jackson's hip was injured so badly that it eventually needed replacing. His doctors diagnosed him with avascular necrosis, a degenerative condition that can wear away a joint till it becomes totally useless (via Los Angeles Times). He never played football again, and his baseball career limped on for just three more years before he retired.

The most famous basketball player to come out of China, Yao Ming stormed the courts as a member of the Houston Rockets for a few short years, before repeated injuries forced him to pack it in (via Sports Illustrated). As reported by AFP (via France24), Ming was so skilled at the game he helped to popularize American basketball at home in China for a brief time. Tall even for a basketball player, Ming towered over his teammates at an incredible 7 feet 6 inches and dominated the game for much of his career in the NBA.

Before long, however, Ming wound up injured. In 2016, he told ESPN that after he did serious damage to his toe, his injuries multiplied. He began to miss games, and a particularly nasty recurring fracture in his left ankle eventually crippled him. Ming quit for good in 2010, at the age of just 30. Despite his short run, Ming still made it into the NBA hall of fame. Today he lives quietly in China, where interest in the NBA has once again waned.

Tony Conigliaro was a 1960s baseball star who shot to fame at a young age as a top-tier batter for the Red Sox (via the Bleacher Report). Conigliaro gained considerable notoriety as the youngest person ever to hit 100 career home runs — but his moment in the sun was all too brief. He began his career in the majors in 1964, but just three years later, in 1967, he took a devastating smack to the face from a poorly aimed ball.

While playing a home game against the California Angels, pitcher Jack Hamilton hit Conigliaro square in the face, striking him across his left cheek. In Conigliaro's memoir, "Seeing it Through," the player recounts that he not only instantly lost his eyesight, his mouth also swelled up so much that he struggled to breathe. Panicking and in agony, he was carted off to the hospital for examination. Thankfully, Conigliaro did not go completely blind, but his eyes were never the same again. The ball had hit him so hard that his left retina detached, permanently affecting his depth perception.

Incredibly, Conigliaro's injury did not prevent him from making a brief comeback from 1969 to 1970, during which time he retained a remarkably impressive batting average. But nothing could prevent his eyesight from steadily growing worse. Speaking with The New York Times in 1971, he lamented, "I just can't see the ball ... I've been getting headaches and my nerves are ready to crack ... " Conigliaro retired for good that year and sadly died at the young age of 45 after suffering a massive stroke. Today his bravery is commemorated through the Tony Conigliaro award, offered to athletes who struggle through adversity to keep on playing.

Darryl Stingley was a talented wide receiver for the New England Patriots in the 1970s (via the Bleacher Report). Nick-named "The Stinger," Stingley's performance got better and better within a few short years, and by 1978 he had been offered one of the most lucrative contracts in football. Sadly, that same year, he was crippled for life in one of the NFL's worst-ever accidents.

Stingley's neck was broken during play, when the notoriously aggressive Las Vegas Raiders player Jack Tatum crashed into him. After being knocked unconscious, Stingley spent three whole months in hospital under the watchful eye of his doctors, but they could not repair the damage. Stingley's vertebrae were so badly crushed during the collision that he never walked again. According to The New York Times, the accident was so shocking at the time that the NFL changed its rules to make the game safer. Shockingly Tatum never apologized for paralyzing Stingley, and he even continued to boast about his savage style of play.

Stingley, on the other hand, remained remarkably positive after his accident and continued to work with the Patriots in a consulting role. Although he would eventually regain the use of his hands, Stingley died quite young due to complications from his accident, aged just 55.