Giants first base coach Roberto Kelly sustained a concussion yesterday after getting hit in the back of the head when Buster Posey’s ball struck him while he was standing near second base during batting practice.
But Kelly still was expected to be on the field for Game 1 of the NLCS tonight as long as he gets cleared by team doctors. He was taken to a hospital for tests and later released, with athletic trainer Dave Groeschner saying in a text, “doing better, going home.”
Posey said he didn’t see what happened.
“I saw him on the ground like everybody else, I didn’t see it hit him,” Posey said. “Anytime somebody gets hit in the head you’re worried for them. He seemed to be doing all right. He was cognizant and answering questions. I think any time with a head injury, it is scary because you just can’t take anything for granted with that and you have to be really, really careful.”
The frightening moment came just more than a month after Athletics pitcher Brandon McCarthy took a line drive to the right side of his head on a ball from the Angels’ Erick Aybar on Sept. 5. McCarthy, Oakland’s opening day starter, sustained an epidural hemorrhage, brain contusion and skull fracture on the play and underwent two hours of surgery.
The 48-year-old Kelly has been the Giants’ first base coach since 2008. He played 14 seasons in the majors for eight teams and was a career .290 hitter with 124 home runs and 585 RBIs. The outfielder spent his longest stint with the Yankees, from 1987-92 and again to finish his career in 2000. He also played for the Reds, Braves, Expos, Dodgers, Twins, Mariners and Rangers.
Kelly was a two-time All-Star and played in 1,337 career games.
* The Giants had their travel schedule perfectly planned. Until their plane in Cincinnati needed more fuel and then experienced a mechanical problem.
“Unbelievable,” manager Bruce Bochy said , back to work after sleeping from 6:30 a.m. Pacific time until just after 9. “Everything right, last out, ready to go.”
The condensed schedule this year and the wacky Game 5s in every division series sent traveling secretaries spinning to get clubs where they needed to be on short notice.
The Giants — who stayed put in Cincinnati to wait out their next opponent — were delayed more than three hours sitting on the tarmac in Ohio as their plane refueled.
Initially, the plane had enough gas to take the NL West winners to Washington, where they thought they would be playing Game 1 of the NL championship series against the Nationals on Sunday.
When the Cardinals rallied to win in the ninth, the plan changed and more fuel was needed to get back to the Bay Area. The Giants finally landed in San Francisco at 5:09 a.m.
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Daniel Descalso already has made his mark on this postseason for the defending World Series champion Cardinals.
He hit the hit a tying, two-out single that sparked the Cardinals’ ninth-inning rally on the way to a 9-7 victory at Washington on Friday night that sent St. Louis back to the NL championship series to play San Francisco.
Now, the 25-year-old second baseman gets to play back home in the Bay Area, where he mostly grew up rooting for the Athletics — along with the Giants.
Descalso lives in San Francisco’s hip Marina neighborhood in the offseason, some 25 minutes from where he grew up along the Peninsula in San Carlos.
He does remember the 1989 Bay Bridge World Series, which was interrupted by an earthquake before the A’s swept the Giants.
“My dad tells me we were going to games and we had two season tickets at A’s games and I would sit there at 2 years old and just watch the game,” Descalso said. “That’s my earliest memories of baseball, sitting over at the Coliseum watching the A’s play.”
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* As if blowing the biggest lead ever in a winner-take-all MLB playoff game wasn’t bad enough, Nationals season ticket holders received an email at 7:01 a.m. yesterday, announcing an exclusive World Series ticket presale set for tomorrow, according to the Nats Enquirer blog. The message was sent just hours after the Nationals’ season-ending loss to the Cardinals.
MLB Advanced Media, not the Nationals, sent the email, according to DC Sports Blog.
“It was a stunningly stupid error on our part and we apologize to the Nationals and their great fans,” Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLB Advanced Media, told the blog in a statement.