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The odds a billiards player will be injured seriously enough to visit an emergency room playing billiards in a year are 1 in 6,734. It is almost twice as likely that a person will visit the emergency room because of an accident involving jewelry (1 in 3,758). The odds a bowler will be injured bowling in a year are 1 in 2,415. It is about 7 times more likely that a pet dog or cat is covered by insurance (1 in 356.4).

All sports are associated with risk. The nicknames given to commonplace injuries— turf toe, tennis elbow, jumper’s knee, footballer’s ankle, jogger’s nipple—offer proof of this. But not all sports are equally dangerous. About 1 in 74.12 bicyclists and 1 in 75.05 soccer players are hurt each year. The odds a water skier will be injured, however, are about 8 times lower (1 in 634.6). It is equally as likely that a boy born in 1985 was named Vincent (1 in 633.7).

These injury rates, of course, are only approximations. It is impossible to know whether participation estimates are completely accurate, whether there are indeed 44.8 million bowlers, 35.6 million cyclists, 31.8 million pool players, and 6.3 million water skiers in America. Still, anecdotal evidence indicates that even the safer sports have their pitfalls. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, dozens of bowlers strained their backs, twisted their thumbs, and fractured their toes in 2008. One woman lost the tip of her finger to a ball return mechanism. Waterskiing also resulted in a handful of gruesome injuries. Two men crashed into mangrove trees, receiving lacerations to the head and scalp. One woman got her finger caught in a quickly-tightening tow rope. It was amputated.

Recently, the Milky Way Lounge in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, began offering virtual bowling. Their weekly event is called “Oui! We Wii™!” and makes use of Nintendo’s popular console. The video game is a nostalgic evocation of the Lounge’s old space, a bona fide bowling alley, and it should prove safer than the real thing. But even the Wii™ is not completely tame. In 2008, according to the CPSC, a 27-year-old woman became so enthusiastic in her gaming that she whacked her finger on the fireplace mantle, fracturing it. Another woman accidentally struck herself in the head.