Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper slips on first base bag, leaves game with apparent injury...

Washington and San Francisco waited out a three-hour-plus rain delay before starting the series opener in Nationals Park. Rain was still falling when play began, and in a full-on worst-case scenario, Bryce Harper injured his left knee hustling down to first base on a ground ball when his leg slid over the wet first base bag.

He appeared to hyperextend his knee, tumbling over the leg after he planted hard past the bag, sending him into an awkward tumble which ended with him landing hard onto his right shoulder.

Harper was in obvious pain, and his groans could be heard with a crowd that was stunned silent in the nation’s capital.

Team trainer Paul Lessard, Dusty Baker, and the Nationals’ coaches came out to help him. Harper was helped off the field, unable to put any weight on his left leg.

Though they did break with tradition recently, when they provided information during the game after Max Scherzer left a recent start with a neck issue, GM Mike Rizzo told 106.7 the FAN in D.C. Sports Junkies recently why they usually wait until after a game to discuss injury updates.

“Who is supposed to give out this information at the time it happens,” Rizzo asked.

“That’s always the problem of it. Does the trainer talk directly to the media after the game? We want to just wait until we get all our ducks in a row, we get the information after the game.

“Our spokesman, our manager, Dusty Baker, speaks to the media before every game and after every game, and I think that’s enough time to get all the information together for us so we can be more accurate about the information and do our due diligence before somebody is tweeting out a message about a medical issue that we don’t have our arms wrapped around yet.”

Since it involves Bryce Harper, and the baseball fans in D.C. will be holding their breath, we might get an update sooner than later.

More information when it’s available. If you want to see what happened, here are some videos, but watch at your own risk: