Manu Ginobili Getting Up More Shots ... All Over His Body

When it comes to protecting yourself from rabies, it seems as if hand sanitizer won't cut it.

San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili -- three-time NBA champ, Olympic gold medalist, NBA All-Star, exterminator extraordinaire and scourge of PETA -- has been required to get shots for rabies, the San Antonio Express-News reports, because of his quick reflexes and a chance encounter with a bat on Saturday night:

Ginobili took four shots Monday in the hip and arm, and he is scheduled for four more such sessions over the next month. "It was pretty funny at the time," Ginobili told the San Antonio Express-News. "Now it's not. I got like a million shots for rabies."

If you haevn't been living in a (bat) cave, you know by now a bat flew into the AT&T Center during the Spurs-Kings contest, causing a slight delay and more than a couple of freak-outs. Ginobili, in one of his best on-court moments since finding Robert Horry all alone at the 3-point line in overtime of Game 5 of the 2005 NBA Finals, swatted the bat to the court, scooped up his prey and handed it to a clearly skittish security guard.

What happened next was a matter of debate.

PETA thought it was dead, and they let the world know that Ginobili should have taken pity on the poor creature. But Ginobili didn't kill the bat. Turns out, he stunned it (and the crowd, who gave him a standing O for his Manu-a-mano defense), which is the reason he was getting precautionary rabies vaccinations.

Because someone released the bat into the wilds of central Texas, no one could do a test on the bat to see if it was carrying the disease. Hence, Ginobili will be subjected to series of shots for the next month. On Monday, he sported bandages covering the vaccinations.

"It wasn't so much fun," Ginobili told the Express-News. "But the bat survived. I'm fine. I'm not going to have rabies."

Phew! Though the thought of a rabid off guard caught the Spurs, well, off guard.

"Everybody was worried about H1N1," said Richard Jefferson to the Express-News. "Now you've got rabies to worry about."

Don't worry about swine flu, Richard. You have plenty of hand sanitizer for that.