Mike Baxter, who made the biggest defensive play to save the first no-hitter in Mets’ history Friday night, has paid for it with his health. He suffered a displaced collarbone and fractured rib cartilage on a catch that sent him crashing into the left field wall, and is expected to miss roughly six weeks.
“There’s still some pain, kind of tight throughout my chest and back,’’ said Baxter, a Queens native and Mets fan who has etched his name into the history books of his childhood team. “Obviously where I hit the wall is tight. [Yesterday] morning we found out more about what’s going on in the chest.
“It’s unfortunate. Now we have to try and get better. … It’s always tough to get hurt, especially with the way the team is playing moreso than the way I was playing. It’s so fun to be a part of what’s going on now. You watch what R.A. [Dickey] did, you want to be out there in any capacity.’’
The morning after Johan Santana’s no-hitter, Baxter was in severe pain and underwent both an MRI exam and CT scan. And though he doesn’t have a concussion, he has other injuries that will sideline him for a month-and-a-half.
“Mike Baxter has a displacement of his right collarbone, next to his sternum. He also has fractured rib cartilage. He’s going to be out for a period of time. We’ll bring a player in [today] to replace him,’’ manager Terry Collins said. “Both of his injuries are on the right side, by the way. … It was his left shoulder we thought he hurt. That should tell you how hard he hit it.’’
Baxter, a Whitestone product and Archbishop Molloy graduate, was all too aware of the Mets’ no-hit futility, and his play will always be linked with their first.
With one out in the seventh inning, he stretched out his left arm to rob Yadier Molina just before crashing into the wall. He lay prone on the warning track, eventually walking off with trainer Ray Ramirez holding his left arm.
“I thought something was wrong because of the way it was feeling. Talking to the doctors, it definitely could have been a lot worse, so from that aspect we’re a little bit lucky the way it turned out,’’ Baxter said. “It went numb on the field and I was reporting that to Ray, so they thought it was dislocated. But I guess it was just a little nerve outage. That’s why the left arm was being held off the field.
“As the night progressed, we were breaking down the symptoms. I guess the force of the wall pushed against the right side of the chest. That’s why there was some compression with the ribs and the sternum, because everything is kind of revolving around the sternum.’’