Red Sox P Chris Sale Speaks After Gruesome Finger Injury
It's been anything but Christmas in July for Boston's Chris Sale. The 33-year-old Red Sox is likely to spend the rest of the month uttering "bah humbug" after cameras caught Sale in the middle of yet another viral moment Sunday afternoon.
That moment came after Sale took a nearly 107-mph line drive to the hand yesterday courtesy of Yankee Aaron Hicks. Sale's finger instantly pointed in the wrong direction and he was forced to leave the game after pitching only two-thirds of an inning. Sale was diagnosed with a fractured pinky finger on his pitching hand.
He addressed the freak fracture with NESN following the game.
“What can you do? Everyone gets knocked down. How do you get back up? That’s where I’m at again,” Sale said. “So, get back up, dust yourself off, clean it off, get back to it."
Sale added: "...sometimes you think, ‘Why me?’ But two things I know for a fact right now: I have a lot of love in my corner, a lot of people that care about me and want me to succeed. And somebody somewhere is having a worse day that I am right now. That’s a fact."
Sale's Sunday start against the Yankees was just his second big league appearance of the summer. He's missed the majority of the season after suffering a rib stress fracture in the offseason.
Despite the lack of big league action, Sale's spent plenty of time in the spotlight.
Earlier this month he was caught on camera going ballistic when a minor league rehab start didn't go his way. Following a bases loaded walk, Sale was removed from the game and took his frustrations out on the clubhouse tv, even work a kick into his remodeling routine.
Following his outburst and seeing the reaction on social media, Sale responded but stopped short of apologizing. OutKick's Alejandro Avila relayed Sale's comments in which the pitcher said, in part: “That’s their problem for videoing it. If you want me to act like a normal person, treat me like a normal person. This isn’t a normal atmosphere. If I was at Bank of America, that wouldn’t fly.”
Though Sale now appears likely be shelved again for a yet to be determined amount of time, he's handling the fracture considerably better than he did his minor league meltdown. "...if I want to sit here and cry about a broken finger and boohoo for me, I could do it. It’s just not fair to everyone in here and it’s not fair to people in the world, honestly," Sale said via NESN. "Like I said, there’s a lot more people out there worse off than I am right now.”
In two starts this season, Sale is 0-1 with a 3.18 ERA and one fracture.
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