Fernando Tatis Unable to Keep All These Potential Wrist-Fracturing Incidents Straight
The San Diego Padres got some bad news as Spring Training opened this week when they found out that Fernando Tatis Jr. had a broken bone in his wrist and would be out up to three months. The injury could be related to a reported motorcycle accident that took place in early December in the Dominican Republic. Or it could be from any other number of incidents Tatis has been involved in where a fractured wrist could have been an outcome. Here's Tatis answering questions about this on Monday.
So there were “a couple incidences” for Tatis this off-season where he got injured…and yup, when asked about the motorcycle accident he responds with “which one?” #Padres pic.twitter.com/YPjFMBHjl1
— Jim Russell (@JimRussellSD) March 14, 2022
Asked about the accident, Tatis responds, "Which one," which some are suggesting means that he was in multiple motorcycle accidents, but in context he was talking about a couple different "incidents" so that seems unclear.
The real issue should be on the follow-up when the reporter specifies the motorcycle accident and Tatis smiles and says it happened when the "reporters were reporting." The reporter then says, "January? December?" and Tatis nods and says, "That day, yeah."
Now that seems pretty wishy-washy. Perhaps Tatis is just trying to be vague because he doesn't want to get in trouble. Of course, the report about the motorcycle accident is already out there, so if there was something in his contract about riding bikes, like there was in Jeff Kent's contract when he said he got hurt washing his truck 20 years ago, the club already has all they need to fine him or whatever.
What's most troubling is that Tatis did so many things where he believes he might have broken his wrist that he is unsure what happened. That's a lot of traumatic hand contact for a guy the Padres just gave a third of a billion dollars.
The good news is that Tatis Jr. is only 23 years old. Maybe the shoulder that required surgery that he should have gotten last fall is all better and maybe he will eliminate falling down from his offseason routine after this. Or at least start a running diary of all his bumps and bruises so he knows how he sustained each of his injuries.