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Yankee outfielder's injury turns spotlight back on concussion treatment
TAMPA, Fla. — Clint Frazier discovered the supposed restorative powers of hydration on Wednesday.
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Then, on the advice of Russell Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback who is in camp this week with the New York Yankees, Frazier began drinking water — and lots of it.
Frazier guzzled six 12-ounce bottles over an hour or so Wednesday morning, and suddenly the symptoms diminished. His headache dissipated and his hunger returned.
“I don’t know for sure,” Frazier said with a laugh, estimating that he had drank a gallon of water. “But it pumps oxygen to your brain a lot, so I feel alive right now. Maybe I was lacking water; I don’t know. Maybe I just feel good.”
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The handling of Frazier’s brain injury is another example of how despite a raised awareness of concussions — and detailed protocols for diagnosing them — the treatment of such injuries remains murky in sports, where there are many interests competing with a player’s welfare.
Wilson himself has experience with the issue. During a game in December, he ducked in and out of a treatment tent in a matter of seconds after he was sent there for a concussion evaluation. The Seahawks were hit with a $100,000 fine for evading the protocol. Wilson was also criticized in 2015 for suggesting that a brand of fortified water, in which he had invested, had helped to prevent a concussion during a playoff game.
While baseball is not the contact sport that football is, the Yankees still are no strangers to head injuries. Catcher Austin Romine was sidelined with a concussion in 2013, as was infielder Stephen Drew in 2015.
And last season, Jacoby Ellsbury missed a month with a concussion after crashing into the center-field wall at Yankee Stadium to make a catch. Ellsbury was allowed to remain in the game to finish the inning.
Frazier’s first collision Saturday came when he made a leaping catch in the first inning before falling and hitting the back of his head on the outfield wall. But his injury may have been the result of a second, lesser collision he had with the wall several innings later. His head did not hit the wall, but his shoulder did, leaving Frazier to wonder if the second collision was jarring enough to exacerbate the first.
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Frazier was not evaluated on the field, but was checked out when he returned to the dugout at the end of the first inning.
“I made it through the game and felt fine,” Frazier said. “That’s why it was frightening afterward. That’s why you have to take it seriously.”
Still, Frazier admitted to feeling conflicted. He arrived to spring training determined to play his way onto the opening day roster, a tall task but one that is not out of reach for a former No. 4 overall draft pick. He cannot earn a spot unless he is on the field.
“It’s not fun watching your goal slipping away while you’re sitting on the shelf,” Frazier said.
Scott Rodeo, the team doctor for the NFL's New York Giants, emphasized that concussions were a unique type of injury. He said he had seen jarring hits resulting in a near-loss of consciousness leave no signs of a concussion, while an innocuous collision could leave persistent symptoms.
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As for water helping out?
“I don’t know of any physiological reason why drinking water would make a difference in alleviating symptoms of a concussion,” Rodeo said.
Major League Baseball’s concussion protocol, instituted in 2011 and updated in the most recent collective bargaining agreement, was supposed to take decisions about handling concussions away from players and managers. It calls for the game to be stopped and a player to be evaluated by a certified athletic trainer if there is an incident with a “high risk of concussion.”
Manager Aaron Boone said there was some thought to removing Frazier from the game at the end of the first inning, but tests did not show any symptoms.
“I think we were comfortable with how we checked him out and checked in on him,” Boone said. “There wasn’t anything in the immediate right there to suggest getting him out of the game.”
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When the Yankees returned from Bradenton, Florida, after the game, Frazier’s head began to hurt and he began to feel nauseated. He notified a trainer, who put him through a battery of tests: balancing on each foot with his eyes closed, looking at lights, reciting the months backward, remembering five words they told him at the beginning.
“I passed all that,” Frazier said. “It was just the headaches.”
He did not feel any better on Sunday or Monday. When Frazier arrives at the clubhouse each day, he typically eats three scrambled eggs with cheese, three pancakes and hash browns. In recent days, he barely touched his food. When he went outside, the sunlight was blinding.
Frazier said the first time he was told he had a concussion was on Monday, when he was sent by the Yankees to a doctor outside the organization.
On Tuesday, Frazier rode an exercise bike for 11 minutes to build his heart rate up. He felt OK, so he then went to the batting cage to take some swings in a soft-toss drill, but he became dizzy tracking the flight of the ball.
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When he arrived at Steinbrenner Field on Wednesday morning, he did not feel any better. He sat at his locker with his forehead throbbing, comparing it to a migraine.
“I can’t even sit in my living room without feeling like” rubbish, Frazier said, using an expletive. “I can’t shake the headache all day.”
But then he began to drink water. He felt well enough to ride the exercise bike again and take some more swings in the cage.
He reported afterward that his head remained clear. The same could not be said for when he will be back on the field.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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BILLY WITZ © 2018 The New York Times
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