Beware of things that go bump in the night.
If this was a game of Family Feud and you asked 100 baseball fans which team’s player fainted in the middle of the night, fell and cut his head on the bathroom floor of his hotel room, and missed the game later that day, the overwhelming number one answer would be the New York Mets. I can just picture Steve Harvey’s look of stunned disbelief if anyone dared answer any of the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball.
While decades of ridiculous Mets injuries are funny in hindsight (this is just the tip of the iceberg), what happened to Brandon Nimmo early Monday morning is anything but, and the longtime Met’s description of the event is downright scary.
Nimmo describes getting up to go to the bathroom shortly after 5 a.m. on Monday, then fainting after experiencing muscle cramps on his way there. He woke up disoriented soon thereafter, bleeding from the head on the bathroom floor. “I was confused,” he told reporters yesterday. “I was like, ‘Why am I here?’”
Anthony DiComo of MLB.com recounted the details of Nimmo’s scary ordeal, but luckily it seems to be a freak accident that shouldn’t affect him going forward. All tests came back negative, and Nimmo said that his doctors seem to think that his muscle cramps, combined with his low heart rate from just waking up, created a perfect storm that led to a short drop in blood pressure, which was enough to knock him out.
Brandon Nimmo’s scary ordeal is a lesson for all of us
Athletes get hurt all the time. They tear their ACLs, pull their hamstrings, strain their elbows, and get concussions from colliding with other players. Those injuries all make sense, unfortunate as they are. When something like this happens, though, it’s a reminder that even people whose entire livelihood depends on their physical fitness and the care they put into maintaining their health aren’t immune from things that could afflict the rest of us. Nimmo’s situation sounds like what happens when grandma stands up too fast, but it took out one of baseball’s most durable players, at least for a day.
The Mets have been on a roll lately, winning 14 of their past 19 to get back to .500 and insert themselves into the thick of the National League Wild Card race. In another twist that could only be Mets-related, many people have credited this run to Grimace, McDonald’s giant purple mascot. Whether through Grimace’s blessings or something else, it’s been the bats that have powered the team, including Nimmo’s, as he’s raised his average by .026 and his OPS by .089 in that time.
After resting yesterday and receiving what hopefully was a much better night’s sleep, Nimmo is expected back in the lineup when the Mets attempt to build on yesterday’s extra-inning win over the Nationals later tonight. Here’s hoping that he’s no worse for wear after the ordeal and that he, the Mets, and the rest of baseball can avoid any similar scary situations in the future.
