Yangervis Solarte Smashed His Face On This Ugly Slide

It took Yangervis Solarte about eight hours at the ballpark on Thursday to notch eight hits during the Blue Jays’ doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians. That’s a lot of hits, and the performance is even more impressive when you consider that, before he got in too much of a rhythm, Solarte violently flailed his body into third base during the third inning of game one. After tagging up from second on a Russell Martin flyout, Solarte took off for third, abruptly slowed down and then abruptly and viciously attacked the basepath with his sternum, smashing his face into the dirt and tumbling past the bag.

This was not just painful-looking but completely gratuitous. The throw in only reached the cutoff man at second base, which gave Solarte plenty of time to reach out and touch third after he went whipsawing past it. Solarte’s slide left a pair of deep tracks on the basepath, one for his right hand and another much larger streak for his face.

After getting visited by the trainers and bandaging his upper lip, Solarte went on to notch six more hits in a pair of high scoring games—the Blue Jays took game one 13-11 in 13 innings, the Indians roughed them up 13-4 in game two—including a pair of dingers and six RBI. Not that you need to suffer pointless, unlucky face trauma to have one of the best days of your career, but it seems like a fine trade-off.