Washington Nationals infielder Paul DeJong has watched the video dozens of times, but not once has he dared to do so with sound.
Maybe one day.
But not now.
DeJong, lying in a hospital bed Monday recovering from 2 ½ hours of sinus, orbital plate and nose surgery, isn’t ready to even watch baseball games again, much less hear the gruesome sound of a 92.7-mph fastball hitting him in the face.
It happened on April 15. DeJong was battling flu symptoms, was taking antibiotics for a respiratory infection, and wasn’t sure he could even play on the cool and wet 46-degree night. He likely would have taken the game off any other night, but this was Jackie Robinson Day and he was playing in Roberto Clemente’s Pittsburgh. No way he was going to sit this one out. It was too important for him to wear No. 42.
The Nationals were trailing 1-0 with a runner on first base in the top of the sixth inning at PNC Park when DeJong stepped to the plate. The count reached 2-and-1 when Pirates starter Mitch Keller threw a 93-mph fastball. It sailed directly towards DeJong’s head. He had no chance to get out of the way.
The ball hit him flush in the face, immediately breaking his nose and leaving a gash below his left eye.
DeJong fell to the ground, his face began bleeding profusely, and Nationals manager Davey Martinez and trainer Paul Lessard rushed from the dugout.
Keller dropped to his knees, his face in anguish, unable to even look.
“The only reason I even looked at the videotape,’ DeJong told USA TODAY Sports, “was to make sure I wasn’t leaning over the plate. I wasn’t. Really, that makes me feel better because I know there was nothing I could do.
“Nothing.’
DeJong, 31, was rushed to the emergency room where they closed the bleeding with stitches in his cheek, nose and his eye. His left eye was filled with blood. He could barely breathe. It was difficult to even talk when he telephoned his mother, Andrea, and agent, Burton Rocks.
He lay in fear wondering if his career was over.
“I was never in too much pain, surprisingly,’ DeJong said. “It was so strange. It was the most uncomfortable feeling without pain. I couldn’t breathe through my nose. My eyes were swollen shut. I had that ringing in my ears. But I didn’t have pain.
“I was lucky. If I had gotten hit straight into my jaw, my eye, or my mouth, there could have been real problems.’
He was kept overnight for observation and underwent a battery of tests with doctors and ophthalmologists. Nationals executives, trainers, coaches, teammates and former teammates called and texted him. Keller reached out twice to let him know it was an accident and see how he was doing.
DeJong was released in the early afternoon. He went back to the team hotel and departed the following morning for a four-hour ride home in a private car arranged by the Nationals.
“Thank God we weren’t playing in LA or out west,’ DeJong said. “I couldn’t get on a plane, so I don’t know I would have gotten home.’
DeJong arrived at his home in Falls Church, Va. and waiting at the door was Steve Whipple, his 79-year-old grandfather, who took the first flight out of Orlando. The two have always been close, hunting and fishing together in Wisconsin, and never did Whipple, a retired information technology specialist with Dow Chemical, miss watching his grandson’s games on TV.
“We always thought Paul was going to be a basketball player growing up,’ Whipple said. “When he got his degree in honors in biochemistry [from Illinois State], we thought he’d go to med school. We didn’t know about his secret passion with baseball.’
‘What’s the damage?’
Whipple and his wife, Sharon, were in Orlando with DeJong’s mother, watching the game together. Andrea had just been released from the hospital two weeks earlier after intestinal surgery, and her parents were at her Orlando home to help. They watched in horror when DeJong was his, saying prayers when they saw him get up, and slowly walk off the field holding a towel to cover the blood.
DeJong has been to the plate 3,349 times in his career, hit 58 times, but had already twice suffered injuries from being plunked. He broke his left hand when he was hit by Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Luis Garcia on a slider in 2018, and he suffered a broken rib in 2021 hit by Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Freddy Peralta.
DeJong, however, had personally witnessed a few gruesome incidents. He was there when Phillies All-Star Bryce Harper was hit in the face by Cardinals reliever Genesis Cabrera in 2021. He was on the field when Memphis teammate Daniel Poncedeleon was hit in the head by a line drive in 2017, resulting in emergency brain surgery. Still, he never thought something drastic would happen to him, having never even broken his nose growing up. Several times over the years he was asked if he wanted to use a C-flap protector on his helmet to protect his face, but he always declined.
“I think you have so many other things to worry about hitting the ball,’ DeJong said, “that you just don’t worry about being hit by a pitch. If you start thinking about anything like that, you’ll never have a chance to hit. It would release fear. I figured it was just part of the game.’
In the aftermath of being hit, with blood streaming from his nose and unable to see, DeJong feared that his vision could be permanently damaged.
“I was pretty concerned what was wrong,’ he said. “I asked the doctors, ‘How bad is it? What is the damage?’ But I also had some calmness about it because of my lack of control. It was like, wow, whatever happens is what it will be.
“But once the doctors reassured me the next morning that there really wasn’t a ton of damage to the eyeball, I felt better. That was my bigger concern. I knew they could fix my nose.’
DeJong spent the next 10 days with his grandfather in his Falls Church home. He was unable to drive, so his grandfather was suddenly in charge of driving his Ford Raptor truck, buying groceries, filling prescriptions and running errands.
“I’m used to driving this little Tesla, and Paul drives a big truck,’ Whipple said. “And there’s all of this traffic. I remember the first day I saw a merge sign on the highway, and then right below it, it said no merge area.’
Once they resolved the driving element, the deal was for DeJong to cook with skirt steak, caramelized onions, parmesan fries and broccoli being his specialty. Grandpa would do the dishes and clean. And they would take turns each day choosing a movie to watch.
They are both huge Clint Eastwood fans, so they quickly went through the Man with No Name Trilogy with “A Fistful of Dollars,’ “For a Few Dollars More,’ and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’ Grandpa watched “Goodfellas’ for the first time. And they sat back and watched halfway through ‘Casino’ on Sunday night, ‘munching on some cheeseburgers,’ before going to bed having to get up at 4:30 a.m. to get to the hospital.
“We’ve always been so close,’ said DeJong, who spends time with his grandfather in Wisconsin hunting and ice fishing in the winter. “We’ve been able to relax and enjoy our time together. He’s been really helpful with stuff around the house, and making sure, honestly, I that feel pretty close to normal.’
While DeJong and his grandfather were at the hospital at 5:30 a.m., with DeJong wheeled into the operating room at 7:30, Rocks and his 91-year-old father were getting up at 3 a.m. in New York City. They took a car to Penn Station, boarded the 6:27 a.m. Amtrak Acela, arrived at 9:28 a.m. at Union Station in Washington, D.C., and then immediately headed to the hospital to wait alongside Whipple while DeJong was in surgery.
The surgery was a bit more extensive than envisioned, repairing his nose, sinuses and inserting a titanium orbital plate. DeJong woke up with splints in his nose, a band-aid above his left eye and his left eye swollen. When he opened his right eye, he saw his grandfather, and Burton and Lawrence Rocks in his room. He warmly greeted them and called in a nurse to take a group photo.
‘I don’t think I’ll have any fear coming back’
It still will be at least two more months, if not longer, for DeJong to be able to play. But for now, he’s looking forward to simply working out again. Once he does, he’ll be ready to sit down and watch games in their entirety. Oh, he’s taken peeks from time-to-time on his cell phone at scores, but it’s been too hard to watch games, reminding him that he’s not even close to playing.
The biggest challenge, DeJong believes, will simply be stepping back into the batter’s box and face live pitching again. He knows he’s not the first to endure something like this, recalling Giancarlo Stanton, Jason Heyward, Kevin Pillar and Harper being hit in the face. He likely will reach out to Pillar, his former teammate with the Chicago White Sox who was hit in the face by a 94-mph fastball in 2021, but certainly is open to any and all advice.
“I will start using the C-flap helmets now to give me protection,’ DeJong said. “I know [Yankees first baseman] Paul Goldschmidt wears just about every protective piece of equipment to make sure he doesn’t miss any games. I found that’s smart.
“But I think I’ll be fine. What makes me feel better is that I wasn’t hunched over, or in a bad position at the plate. If I was, I might be afraid of inside pitches. But I can go and take my at-bats like I normally would, and play the game the way I’m used to playing.
“I hope Keller is, too. He reached out to me a couple of times, so I hope that he can get back to pitching the way he was before, too. It was just a freak thing.’
DeJong plans to return back to Nationals Park and start seeing his teammates again when they begin their next homestand May 5. He has appreciated the hundreds of calls and text messages around the country. Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams even stopped by one day to bring over DeJong’s paycheck, and then went out and shut down the Orioles over five innings the next day.
The workouts will being in about a month, DeJong says, and his goal is to be playing again before the All-Star break.
“I don’t think I’ll have any fear coming back,’ DeJong said. “But until you go through something like this, you don’t know. You don’t realize the struggle guys go through just to get back to normal. Just sleeping with your head up. Trying to breathe through your nose. Taking a shower. You miss all of these day-by-day tasks because you’re in a total vulnerable state.
“But you know something, I miss it. I really do.
“I can’t wait to get back, and it’s going to be special when I do.’’
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