One minute the Washington Nationals were rallying and threatening to potentially steal another win from the New York Mets, but the crowd, which was whipped into a frenzy by the late-inning comeback attempt fell silent when Adam Eaton fell to the ground beyond first base after hustling down the line for a base-loading infield hit.
With runners on first and third and no one out in the ninth, Eaton sent a grounder to short and hustled down the line, beating Asdrubal Cabrera’s throw to the bag, but he stumbled, stepping awkwardly in front of the bag and crumbled to the ground in obvious pain once he passed the base.
It looked like he completely rolled over his left ankle, stepping on the front side of the bag with a late last stride and coming down hard on his left leg.
Eaton had to be helped off the field, and he appeared to be incapable of placing any weight on the left leg.
Dusty Baker didn’t offer much in the way of information when the Nationals’ manager met with reporters after what ended up a 7-5 loss.
“What do you know?” a reporter asked.
“Nothing,” Baker said.
“Just he hurt his leg and they’re going to take him in tomorrow for evaluation.
“As you saw, the same thing we saw, it didn’t look too good, so we’ll know something more tomorrow.”
By “evaluation”, Baker qualified, he meant MRI. He didn’t, however, say if it was a knee or ankle injury.
“It’s his leg, we don’t really know yet, I’m not at liberty to say yet,” Baker explained.
It was an emotional end to the series opener with the Mets. Eaton left the field of play, replaced by a pinch runner, with no one out in the ninth.
Jeurys Familia struck Trea Turner out with the bases loaded and Josh Edgin came on to face Bryce Harper and got a weak grounder back to the mound to start a game-ending 1-2-3 DP.
“We would much rather have lost the game than lose Adam,” Baker said, “so emotions were — I think we all knew on the bench it didn’t look good, but we still had a chance to come back and win that game, but [Familia] made the pitches on Trea and [Edgin] made the pitches on Bryce and they got away.
“That was a tough way to end the game.”