Baseball Players Have The Weirdest Injuries Part 503: Nick Gonzales Of The Pirates Suffered A Fractured Ankle While Rounding The Bases After His First Home Run Of The Season

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It took the Pittsburgh Pirates all of an hour and a half until something very Pittsburghy happened to them this baseball season. Their second baseman, Nick Gonzales, smoked this ball over the wall for the Buccos first homer of the season. Usually you'd be pretty pumped and excited for that first bomb of the year, but not when you realize Gonzales was limping pretty bad and taking his sweet time around the bases. He wasn't showboating, turns out he was actually really hurt. 

He was busting it out of the box, looked fine there, but then obviously was in pain after rounding first. No real angle or video of him touching first so who knows. He fouled a few balls off the ankle in spring training but felt good enough to give it ago, turns out he probably shouldn't have. Little Kirk Gibson action rounding the bases for sure. You were hoping it was a cramp issue, maybe a hamstring strain or something but it turns out it's a non-displaced fracture of his left ankle. Pittsburgh finally has a few nice pieces and immediately one of them busts up his ankle AFTER hitting a homer. Can't make that up, only in Pittsburgh does that happen. 

Just add it to the list of weird baseball injuries that we see every year though. I'm sure the foul balls off the ankle had something to do with it and it just fractured once he hit the bag the wrong way or something, but such an unfortunate thing to happen. This is just kind of how it goes for the Yinzers up there. Stepping on a bag wrong will cost ya a good chunk of the season. He's going to get looked at by a foot specialist and will be out for a while, tough break for Nicky G who was one of the best college hitters we've seen in sometime. Maybe Manfred should work on making the bases softer? Put a pillow down for these guys to step on, just think about it. It does officially feel like the regular season now that we have a funky injury to a player though, got that out of the way quick.