I took my son to a Columbus Clippers game yesterday. No Cubs-related involvement. We both just wanted to see another game before the season winds down.
Early in the game, a batter’s bat shattered, sending the barrel with its freshly-sharpened point down toward third base. He’d never seen that before, and he asked if it was dangerous. So, naturally, I told him the story of Tyler Colvin and the flying shard of bat that struck him in the chest, sending him to the hospital for three days to prevent a collapsed lung.
That conversation with my son was just yesterday. I had no idea the very next day, today, was the anniversary of that very event!
That is just about as scary as it can get on the field, short of the bat piece hitting Colvin somewhere even worse. At first you didn’t really realize how badly he’d been punctured by the bat, and the thinking was that it might just be a bad cut. But it turned out there was real risk to his lungs.
Fortunately, Colvin did recover fully from the injury, though he didn’t return to the field down the stretch that season. The 2006 Cubs first rounder ultimately struggled in 2011, and was later traded to the Rockies (WITH NO ONE ELSE!) in the deal that returned Ian Stewart. Since Colvin wound up putting together a really good 2012 season for the Rockies, I’d say they got the better of that one.
Colvin, now 37, would go on to play for the Giants and in the White Sox and Dodgers farm systems, ultimately hanging ’em up after the 2018 season.