I’ve never shared the full inside baseball on the... inside fastball that broke my jaw April 5, 2008 at Ole Miss, we were facing projected 1st rounder and future Big Leaguer, Lance Lynn Before it became widespread, Lance had success pitching towards the top of the zone with a fastball that appeared to rise He got me out my first at bat on a high fastball that I should have laid off So my 2nd at bat I told myself to see the ball down in the zone My eyes jumped from his release point to the area I was trying to see the ball down to. I never ended up seeing the pitch until .01 before it hit me If you’ve ever gotten hit in the face, you don’t know what happened at first. So it took me about half a second to realize what happened When I did, I fully expected to spit teeth out and when I leaned over to spit and saw that only blood came out, I assumed I was fine Then I heard the Ole Miss head coach yell “it hit his bat,” because the cracking of my jaw sounded like a foul ball off a mental bat I turned around and yelled “shut the fuck up” at their dugout and proceeded on to first base My trainer came up to me and his first words were “oh fuck,” Knowing that was poor bedside manner, and that I was probably very fucked up, I joked “you’re not supposed to say that,” At that point I knew I was coming out of the game but I was so full of adrenaline that it didn’t hurt and wouldn’t begin to hurt for a couple hours Both the pitcher and coach felt so bad after it happened that both came to apologize to me at the end of the inning while I was beside their dugout being tended to by my trainer and their doctor I actually had to walk to the parking lot through the stadium seats and all the fans looked at me in horror as I had a white bloody rag hanging off my face. It was surreal watching their reactions to my blood We drove over to an Oxford medical center that was clearly not the best location for me to be in, so my coach’s wife drive me up to Nashville to get surgery that night We got swept that weekend and I got my jaw wired shut for the first of 6 weeks I stupidly tried to come back and play the following week. My coaches let me as I was medically cleared to hit with a face mask, but the rest of my season I was a different hitter I was hitting .400 at the time of the fracture, 2nd in the SEC, with 2 months left in the season I finished the year hitting .312. Meaning I flipped from one of the best hitters in the conference to one of the worst before and after the incident Despite finishing my Vandy career 7th on their all time hit list, this play is what I hear about the most when I return I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had much issues with my jaw thus far post incident, although I did find out that 2 of the nerves of the impacted teeth are dead, and I will likely need to get one of those teeth extracted at some point When they showed me the X Ray it was a clear break. A scary image that could have been WAY worse if it were 3 inches higher, as I likely would not be able to see out of my left eye (and wouldn’t be as handsome as I am) Anyway, to have interesting ideas you must have interesting experiences and this was certainly oneshow more
