A baseball can be a weapon. It's harder than you might think. Held in your hand, there is a little give to it. But there's no give when you're hit by one, except from your body. It feels like a punch from a tiny hand, like a baby Mike Tyson that has chosen to hurt you.
The point of impact on a baseball is small. You are not hit at first with the whole diameter of the ball. You are hit first with a piece of it the size of a quarter, which is the part that hurts you the most. Immediately after, it swells. There is a red spot that stings a little. You want to touch it. You tell your friends you think it will bruise, because it throbs, which means that inside something is bleeding. But that center part doesn't bruise, not at first. The edges, where the injury is the closest to the surface, bruise first: yellow then red then deep purple. A few days later, the center will begin to color in, so that even two weeks later, there is still a mark on you. All of that is if you're hit somewhere soft (quad, ass, upper arm), and with a baseball thrown 75 mph, max.
The ball that came for Brice Turang in the ninth inning of Monday night's Dodgers-Brewers game was an 85 mph sweeper tailing inside. It was a hitter's count, 2-1, and a pivotal moment. The Brewers had entered the bottom of the ninth down 2-0. But after an easy pop fly for out one, the Dodgers ended up in trouble. Isaac Collins walked. Jake Bauers pinch hit a double. Jackson Chourio hit the first pitch for a sacrifice fly. 2-1. Then Christian Yelich walked, and the Dodgers switched pitchers for the insufferable Blake Treinen, who walked William Contreras.
So it was bases loaded. The Brewers were down one run in the bottom of the ninth. Brice Turang took a strike. He took a ball. He swung and missed at the third pitch, and then here came that evil sweeper, trailing toward the inside of his back knee. If he let it hit him, the Brewers tie the game.
"Sacrifice your body," I probably would have yelled at the screen if I were a Brewers fan. But it's not that simple. Turang's body remembers every baseball he's ever been hit by. It remembers the impact and the sting and the swell and the ice and the bruise. It remembers how every time you bump that spot, it shoots a pain up to your brain begging you not to let it happen again. It remembers, and so his hips jutted back instinctually, his knees dodged the projectile, and the ball went right into the glove of Will Smith.
"I'm sure Turang would love to tell his brain to just stand in there and wear one," an announcer said. But that's not how it works. It's your instincts that make you an athlete. They tell you when to dive. They tell you when to swing. You "know" things, sure. But you train yourself over a lifetime to respond to a ball in specific situations. Or, in the case of a ball heading straight for your knee, you subconsciously choose self-preservation.
"Well, if you see me look in the dugout, I’m thinking, 'Damn.' I know it. Everybody knows it. I couldn’t tell you why I did it, I just got out of the way. That’s just how it is," Turang said after the game.
"When the ball is coming towards you, your natural thing—it's a breaking ball, your natural thing is to do that," Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. "And I know he was thinking the same thing after the ball passed. It happens. He'll learn from that situation. But it's hard. Even if you try to maneuver yourself, it's hard to get hit by the pitch because it's so reactionary."
I do not think that Turang will learn from this, because there is nothing to learn. The ball came for him, and he moved to get out of the way. That was the right reaction! In the version of the game where Turang takes a sweeper to the inside of his knee, the Brewers score a run to tie the game and then ... something else happens. They win? They lose? The game goes to 15 innings? And for the next few days, Turang, at best, has a bruised knee that throbs a little when he lies down.
When Turang dodged, he could have still hit a single to win the game, not just tie it. He did not know when he dodged the ball that he would swing and miss at the next sweeper high in the zone and strike out. And anyway, this was just Game 1 of the NLCS. There are so many more games left. I don't think it's worth it for a professional athlete to potentially sacrifice one of their knees in that situation. But today, Brice Turang feels like it is.
