Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer had his scheduled ALCS start moved back from Game 2 to Game 3, due to a lacerated pinky injury suffered while repairing a drone. Well, Game 3 came along on Monday night in Toronto, and for some reason the Indians thought Bauer was okay to pitch, despite his finger looking like something out of a horror film. The start didn’t even last a full inning, as blood was dripping off Bauer’s finger in the bottom of the first, and he was forced to leave the game.
Despite losing their starting pitcher with two outs in the first inning, the Indians came away with a 4-2 victory to go up 3-0 over the Blue Jays in the ALCS.
Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan wrote a terrific column reacting to the game, focusing on Cleveland’s remarkable bullpen performance (six pitchers combining to throw 8 1/3 innings of two-run ball), manager Terry Francona, and of course, Bauer. Passan explained how Bauer actually wanted to burn the finger wound shut with a soldering iron:
In the days leading up to Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, when Trevor Bauer sat in the Cleveland Indians’ trainer’s room getting treatment on his mangled right pinky, he kept asking the medical staff to use a soldering iron and burn shut the wound he suffered at a hotel when a drone he was repairing went haywire and sliced his finger from the nail to second knuckle. They laughed, even though they understood Bauer was dead serious and regretted not cauterizing it himself the night of the injury.
“I even had a soldering iron in my hotel room,” Bauer said. “Instead of going to the ER, I probably should’ve sealed it closed myself.”
Had Bauer done so, he may well have robbed the ALCS of the instantly iconic moment that unfolded fewer than 20 pitches into Game 3. (Not to mention risked infection, burns and other undesirable conditions.)
That certainly seems a little nuts for the reasons Passan said at the end of that excerpt, but it just shows how much professional athletes want to be able to be out there competing in postseason games. As Indians reliever Cody Allen told Passan, he thinks Bauer would’ve cut off his right arm and tried to use the left arm if that meant being able to stay in the game:
Bauer’s frustration gave way to resignation, even as his teammates tried to console him. “You could cut his right arm off,” Allen said, “and he’ll figure out a way to try and go out there and compete for six, seven innings with his left arm.”
Okay, now that’s probably a tad extreme, but we certainly get the point about how much Bauer wanted to be able to pitch.
