Bassitt thankful for support after line-drive injury
Chris Bassitt’s face is swollen and he’s scheduled for surgery to repair a fracture in his right cheek after being struck in the face by a line drive with a batted ball a night earlier, but the A’s and their ace expressed relief the scary incident wasn’t worse.
In fact, the A’s haven’t ruled out having the righthander return to the rotation by the end of the season.
“From the bottom of my heart, I’d like to thank the White Sox and Athletics staff, front offices, and owners,” Bassitt said in a Tweet on Wednesday. “The support my family and I’ve received has been overwhelming. I’d also like to thank Rush University Medical Center and their staff. God is good. Can’t wait to get back!”
Bassitt was officially placed on the 10-day injured list on Wednesday, though there is no question he’ll be out much longer. He’s scheduled to have surgery to repair a tripod fracture in his right cheek under his eye sustained after the A’s pitcher took a line drive to his face off the bat of White Sox outfielder Brian Goodwin during Tuesday night’s game.
Bassitt, 32, is scheduled for surgery at Chicago’s Rush University Hospital on Tuesday performed by plastic surgeon Dr. Peter Revenaugh. Paparesta gave a rough estimate of six weeks for the bone to fully heal, but doctors in Chicago said he could return to physical activity a week or 10 days following surgery, depending on how his body responds.
Manager Bob Melvin said the team sat in silence following Tuesday’s game. As one of the team’s longest-tenured players, Bassitt is a team leader and “Mount Rushmore” player.
“It was awful, after the game we got a little news and talked briefly, but it was silence because everyone had the same take. There are certain guys — we would have had the same feeling wiht anyboyd on our team — but certain guys like Chris that ahve been around wiht us that mean so much to the team and are leaders. He coined the term Mount Rushmore.”
Bassitt coined the term for his teammates, Melvin saying he bellowed it during the A’s series against the Toronto Blue Jays in which longtime A’s reliever Yusmeiro Petit pitched against former longtime A’s shortstop Marcus Semien.
“That’s who he is, he’s a Mount Rushmore guy for all of us,” Melvin said.
MLB’s single-game postseason wild card round begins six weeks from the scheduled surgery date, though it seems unlikely the A’s would thrust Bassitt into such a pivotal start for his return.
“To be very frank, knowing Chris as long as I have, he’s a bull in a china closet,” Paparesta said. “So I think he’s probably going to attack this thing on as the next big challenge ahead of him and I don’t know that we have a way to stop him, to be honest.”
Bassitt’s wife Jessica and young daughter Landry, along with his parents, were with him at the hospital and he was released on Wednesday morning. Bassitt’s right eye is swollen shut and he received 15-16 stitches on two facial lacerations below his eye and further down his cheek.
Bassitt’s CT scan came back clean and he doesn’t have concussion symptoms, including nausea or dizziness. Though his face is swollen, there is no dam
age to his eye or orbital bone.
Tuesday night after the ball hit Bassitt, Paparesta rushed to the pitcher’s aid as the A’s players looked on in horror.
The White Sox, the team that drafted Bassitt in 2011, provided medical staff and assistance, too.
“We’re all incredibly grateful that Chris is doing as well as he is today,” general manager David Forst said. “It was an awful thing to have to watch.”
Paparesta added that Bassitt is in “good spirits” and is eager to come back. The A’s are not strangers to injuries like this one. Former Oakland pitcher Brandon McCarthy was struck by a line drive in 2012 and suffered more severe injuries than Bassitt’s. McCarthy reached out to Melvin and the A’s following Bassitt’s injury.
“This is not something you have every year, but sadly enough this has occurred another time during my tenure in Oakland so you have an understanding of what to expect,” Paparesta said.