Royals manager almost died in fall from tree
Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost broke his pelvis last week after a fall from a tree on his property in Meriwether County, Ga., and it proved to nearly be a deadly accident.
Yost was checking the safety straps in a tree stand, which deer hunters use, when he fell about 20 feet to the ground.
“I reached around to hook into the tree and right as soon as I grabbed my strap to reach up to hook into the tree, it was like a hangman’s gallow, the stand just let go — down I went,” Yost said in a conference call on Monday.
“It was a massive fracture of the pelvis and I’m glad to be alive.”
Yost said he also broke four ribs in the incident.
“I don’t think I’ve left this lounge chair since I’ve been home for more than 5 minutes in two days. I just find a spot where I can kind of relax and take a deep breath and then try not to move for 10 hours,” Yost said from his home. “Quite a bit of pain there, but it is getting a little bit better.”
Yost said the accident happened on Nov. 4 when he went to check the stands on his property after his wife, Deb, left for a wedding shower.
After Yost hit the ground, he call Deb on his cellphone.
“I had my phone in my pocket, which was key to this whole thing,” Yost said, “and being in a spot on my farm that had service was key.”
Deb Yost called the couple’s son Ned Jr., who was at their home and he found his father, who said he never lost consciousness. Yost was airlifted to a hospital in Georgia.
Doctors drilled a hole into one leg and inserted a pin with two 10-pound weights to ballast Yost’s side and worked to get him into a compression suit.
“After the surgery is when the trauma doctor came in and ... said, ‘Look you guys don’t know how lucky you are,’” Yost said. “They couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.”
The doctor told Yost that his type of injury has a 25 to 30 per cent mortality rate. Yost said he lost seven to eight units of blood before the doctors were able to get him stabilized.