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Some black out in moments like these, but Ian Hamilton remembers exactly what he saw.
“I saw the ball right there,” the Yankees’ bullpen hopeful said. “And then I saw the end of my year.”
And he remembers what he felt on June 4, 2019, when the then-White Sox prospect briefly looked down — “for maybe two seconds” — to pour a handful of sunflower seeds into his hand.
While Hamilton was in the Triple-A Charlotte dugout, a foul ball was blasted into his face and set off a spiderweb of facial fractures.
He felt the roof of his mouth rip open.
He felt several front teeth get dislodged — some hitting the back of his throat.
Before he could process what had happened or the flood of blood exploding from his face, he felt the team’s trainer “punch me in the face with a towel.”
Thus began a nightmarish few years from which Hamilton is just beginning to wake up.
Hamilton, one of the Yankees’ spring standouts who has a legitimate shot at a bullpen spot, first required surgery to sew up the roof of his mouth, then had to wait three weeks before doctors could begin follow-up operations.
