Craig Albernaz was struck in the face by a foul ball while standing in the Orioles dugout during Baltimore’s 9-7 win over the Diamondbacks on Monday.
The scary moment occurred in the fifth inning when O’s second baseman Jeremiah Jackson sent a screaming foul ball into his team’s dugout and struck the Orioles’ manager on the side of the face with the ball as he was standing at the top of the tunnel to the clubhouse at Camden Yards.
Albernaz was taken down into the clubhouse and evaluated by the medical staff.
Bench coach Donnie Ecker took over as manager.
Ecker told reporters after the game that Albernaz was doing “good.”
“Just as a precaution right now, he is going to get scanned, and we’ll have more information tomorrow,” Ecker said.
“We sit there every game and we’re all kind of vulnerable to it,” he added. “When it happens, everyone feels for him.”
Albernaz did eventually return to the dugout in the sixth inning, the MASN broadcast showed.
A red mark was clearly visible on his face when he was shown on the broadcast and he eventually left the dugout again and did not return.
“The fact he didn’t go to the ground shows how tough of an SOB he is. And the fact he wanted to come back to the dugout, he’s got a big set of balls on him,” Orioles pitcher Trevor Rogers said, per the Baltimore Banner’s Andy Kostka.
The Orioles had been trailing 4-1 at the time that Albernaz was hit with the foul ball.
Baltimore was down 7-1 heading into the bottom of the sixth, when the Orioles battled back with five runs in the sixth.
Jackson capped it off with a grand slam to cut the O’s deficit to just one, with the blast coming just in time for Albernaz to see when he briefly returned to the dugout.
Pete Alonso’s two-run home run in the bottom of the seventh gave the Orioles an 8-7 lead and Jackson hit a solo shot in the bottom of the eighth to extend the advantage.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
