New York Mets first baseman Jared Young suffered a frightening head injury during a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, and the scene quickly turned from routine to alarming in the sixth inning.
The play started with a slow groundball up the first-base line. Young and starting pitcher Nolan McLean both moved toward the bag to try to field it, and as Young lunged down, McLean’s knee caught him flush in the side of the head. The hit knocked Young out immediately, and he ended up face down and motionless on the infield dirt.
Medical staff and paramedics rushed in to stabilize his neck and back, and Young stayed on the ground for several minutes as players from both teams looked on. He was eventually placed on a backboard and loaded onto a motorized cart, but the handling drew harsh reaction online. Footage from that moment prompted criticism of the people helping him off the field.
“Where are all the competent people in this world?” one fan asked.
“This literally could’ve killed him, they need to hire better medical personnel, oh my god,” a second person stated.
“They bounced this dude around so much that if he didn’t have a broken neck already, he sure does now,” a third added of Jared Young.
Young later regained consciousness at the hospital and asked doctors, “What happened?”
Interim manager Andy Green offered a positive update afterward, saying, “He’s had a CT scan. Results have come back negative. So, in that sense, it’s very positive.”
The team also confirmed that the hospitalized first baseman has full operational use of his extremities. Green said, “It feels like we’ve avoided the scariest outcomes.”
Francisco Lindor described how difficult it was to watch, saying, “It was scary to sit there and just know that he wasn’t with us in that moment.”
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