What’s it like to vomit in front of an MLB crowd? ‘It was crazy’

It was, Lucius Fox said, “definitely a first.”

“Never threw up on a baseball field, never thrown up in front of all of those people and on TV,” Fox joked Tuesday.“but, yeah, it happened, man. It was crazy.”

Washington’s rookie infielder vomited on the field at Nationals Park on Sunday afternoon, throwing up during the first atbat, in front of the crowd in the stands for a game against the Giants. He didn’t mind talking about it a few days later. Fox said he had food poisoning and placed the blame on his Saturday night restaurant dinner — steak, macaroni and cheese and spinach. Fox’s stomach didn’t feel great when he woke up Sunday, but he ignored it and went to the park. He tried to eat breakfast, didn’t have the appetite and, after eating a few eggs, threw them away.

He proceeded with his normal game day routine. But the closer it crept to game time, the more his stomach started to cramp. Fox looped in a trainer about 15 minutes before the first pitch and drank Pepto-bismol. When the team ran onto the field, his stomach kept cramping — and on his final warmup throw, he bent down. By the second pitch of the game, Fox knew he was in trouble.

“‘Aw, man, please don’t tell me it’s what I think it is,’”he said to himself. After two pitches, he called for a timeout and went through two options in his head: run to the visitors’ dugout, which was closer, or run across the field to the Nats’ dugout. Fox chose the latter but couldn’t make it. He can still hear, and laughs about, the crowd’s reaction as he plays back the moment in his head.“i was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that just happened,’ ” he said.