Orioles Outfielder Bonked On The Head By Badly Misjudged Pop Fly

If you were looking for one single moment to represent the bottomless misery of the last, oh, two years of Orioles baseball, you could do a lot worse than D.J. Stewart’s ill-fated play on a fourth-inning fly ball in Tuesday’s game against the Yankees in Baltimore. Stewart, chugging in on the play, appeared to badly misjudge the ball’s trajectory, or brutally mistime his sliding attempt, or simply slip and fall—instead of making a heroic highlight catch, Stewart wiped out pretty badly and then had a baseball ricochet off the side of his head.

The visual there is very funny, but Stewart did not seem well for the rest of the half-inning, and he was replaced in the lineup and in left field by Jace Peterson after the third out, presumably so that he can be checked for a concussion. Today was Stewart’s first day back in the lineup with the Orioles following a two-month absence due to an ankle injury suffered in another ugly outfield play, back in early June:

Even by recent Orioles standards, this is painful and embarrassing. Maybe the Orioles could stick to sucking and losing with slightly less of a slapstick flair. God knows they’ve certainly made their point.