San Francisco Giants: Alguacil’s Scary Injury Should Lead to Changes
San Francisco Giants’ first base coach Jose Alguacil suffered a very scary, but preventable, injury on Saturday during Cactus League play.
An extremely scary sight at Saturday’s Cactus League game between the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals immediately erased all concerns about a shoddy offensive performance from the Giants. It made the left field battle seem unimportant, and the battle royal for an infield bench job seem trivial.
New Giants’ first base coach Jose Alguacil was sitting outside the dugout on a folding chair, next to manager Bruce Bochy near the on-deck circle, when a foul ball off the bat of Royals’ prospect Hunter Dozier came screaming back and hit Alguacil in the face. The former Sacramento River Cats’ manager went down to the ground in a pile, blood pooling on the hard Arizona dirt beneath him.
The 44-year-old, who spent nine seasons as a minor league infielder (including six in the Giants’ organization in the 1990s) was eventually put on a stretcher after getting up under his own power, and airlifted to a nearby hospital to assess the damage.
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Alguacil suffered a broken nose, fractures to his eye socket, and deep lacerations on his face. He was wearing glasses when he was hit, and those were broken. He underwent surgery at the Phoenix hospital to repair his nose and close the cuts on the left side of his face, and surgery was said to go well. Considering how bad the damage could have been, it can be considered a blessing that Alguacil didn’t lose his eye completely or suffer any brain damage.
Managers and coaches routinely sit outside the dugout in folding chairs during Spring Training, a practice that isn’t allowed during the regular season. The risk is always there even when sitting in a dugout, but that risk is exacerbated tenfold when the coaches choose to put themselves a bit closer to the action.
Bats and balls routinely go toward and into the dugout (sometimes, it creates incredible moments like this), but at least there is a fence and guardrail in front of the dugout to protect players and coaches. Bochy admitted after the game that sitting where they were is “not smart of us…but it’s what we do here”. After having watched his colleague and friend Alguacil go through this, it’s possible that Bochy and his staff will change their way of doing things. Maybe they will go the safer route and choose to sit on the dugout from here forward.
And maybe, MLB can step in and disallow the practice of sitting on the field during Spring Training. At the very least, they can make those coaches who choose to sit there wear helmets as they have done with base coaches in recent years. Mike Coolbaugh, the first-base coach for the Double-A Tulsa Drillers at the time, was tragically struck and killed by a line drive foul ball on July 22nd, 2007, and the league decided to have all base coaches wear helmets starting the next season. It’s unfortunate that it took a person’s death for them to make that safety rule, but in this instance, they can make sure something that serious doesn’t occur.
This harrowing moment was also a reminder of why netting around the home plate area and near the dugout is necessary. Fans are at risk as much as players are when they are that close to the field, and the netting is an extra measure of safety and security that is much needed. That immediate danger caused the MLB to recommend that each team add additional netting around home plate, stretching to both dugouts, to prevent foul balls from rocketing into the stands and injuring a fan. The league should probably go one step farther and make it mandatory, but this was a good start.
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Best wishes to Jose Alguacil and his family, and we’re all hoping for a speedy recovery.