“If it had hit me a little higher, I would have been in trouble.”
San Diego Padres outfielder Kim Ha-seong recalled the dizzying moment when he was hit in the knee by a foul ball while batting and had to be replaced.
“It’s much better,” Kim told MK Sports before the Padres’ game against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, N.Y., on July 27 (KST). The pain is less and the movement is better,” he said.
Kim went down the day before against the Washington Nationals after being hit on the inside of his left knee by a foul ball he hit.
Describing the pain as the worst he’s ever felt in baseball, he said, “Normally, the pain goes away after a while, but yesterday it kept hurting. It was really bad. I couldn’t put any pressure on my leg, so I thought, ‘Something’s wrong,'” he says.
Eventually, he was unable to walk on his own and had to be helped off the field by a trainer. Fortunately, the uneasy feeling was short-lived. An X-ray revealed nothing wrong.스포츠토토
Luck was on his side. “If it had hit the upper cap (kneecap) a little bit further, it would have broken,” he said, adding that he avoided serious injury by a hair’s breadth.
He took the field separately before team practice, sprinting and side-stepping as trainers watched, and then went through normal drills during team batting practice.
For now, he’s out of the starting lineup. “We’ll probably rest him today, but he’s available,” manager Bob Melvin said of his status.