Giancarlo Stanton Describes ‘Scary Moment’ Liner Hit Masahiro Tanaka

Masahiro Tanaka gave the New York Yankees quite a scare Saturday afternoon after getting drilled in the head by a line drive during practice.

And Giancarlo Stanton was the unfortunate soul behind the bat.

Stanton could only watch as medics rushed on to the field at Yankee Stadium to tend to the pitcher he’d accidentally injured. And it was an agonizing few minutes, to say the least.

“As fast as it happens it is more slow-mo,” Stanton said Monday during a Zoom call, per the New York Post’s George A. King III. “For me, you see it in slow-mo and you want that ball to keep veering off and it didn’t, kind of like when I got hit. Everything is kind of like slow-mo; look how fast it happened later. At the end of the day I was glad he was awake, functioning and responsive.”

One of the worst moments for Stanton, however, was seeing his teammate scrunched up in a ball on the ground and writhing in pain.

“That was a scary moment for me, terrible initially of course. You never want to see your teammate on the ground, especially by the hand of yourself,” Stanton said, per King. “I talked to him, he appears to be fine given the circumstances. My stance is as long he’s OK, I am OK. I think we really dodged something that could have been a lot worse.”

Luckily, Tanaka was diagnosed with just a mild concussion, according to Yankees manager Aaron Boone. In fact, Boone believes Tanaka “dodged a bullet” injury-wise.

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