Dancing With The Stars' Mark Ballas Kicked In Groin

I'm in Fort Worth, Texas. Up til the end of November, I subscribed to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. I finally could not take its small town badness anymore, cancelled and subscribed to the Dallas Morning News. One of the ways the Fort Worth Star-Telegram annoyed me was anytime there was any sort of Texas or Fort Worth connection, no matter how remote--visited Fort Worth when 2 years old, cousin married to a Fort Worth native--that connection would be part of the story.

I say the above to explain why it amuses me to write that Houston born Dancing with the Stars professional dancer, 22 year old, 5' 7'', Mark Ballas, was literally kicked in the groin while dancing with his season 6 partner in winning, Kristi Yamaguchi.

A Dancing with the Stars troupe, led by Maxsim Chmerkovskiy, is touring the country.

Mark Ballas and Kristi were dancing on Saturday in Los Angeles when the groin injury struck. Ballas grimmaced in pain as he apologized to the audience for his diminished capacity.

Even though he was in extreme pain Ballas managed to dance quite wildly with the former Olympic Ice Queen and to also get quite rambunctious doing a hip-hop routine with pros Lacey Schwimmer and his best friend, this year's pro winner, Derek Hough.

Mark Ballas is expected to be out of commission for a few weeks. He should be back in top twinkle toe form when it comes time for me to go see all that dancing in Dallas.