Sitting by his locker at Camden Yards, Willie Calhoun pointed to the parts of his face and forearm where metal lies beneath his skin.
The Yankees outfielder can feel the plates chill below the surface when he plays in cold temperatures, but he’s embraced the hardware. “There’s not many more places that they can hit me where I’m not protected at least,” he recently told The Daily News.
A pair of hit-by-pitches made that metal necessary. The first, a 95-mph spring training fastball from Dodgers southpaw Julio Urias, struck the lefty-swinging Calhoun in the mouth in 2020 while still a member of the Rangers. The career-derailing heater shattered Calhoun’s jaw, required an air-lift to the hospital for surgery, and jumpstarted a years-long stretch that left the former top prospect feeling “gun shy” and “timid” at the plate.
While facial fractures are not an everyday occurrence in the majors, two of Calhoun’s teammates can relate to his terrifying experience.
Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, then with the Marlins, sustained fractures, lacerations and dental damage when former Brewers starter Mike Fiers hit him just under his left eye in June 2014. And reliever Ian Hamilton felt his teeth rattle around his bloody mouth in 2019 when a line drive squared him up, resulting in numerous breaks ranging from his jaw to his orbital bones. He had been sitting in the dugout while a member of the Triple-A Charlotte Knights, a Chicago White Sox affiliate, when he felt the impact.
“It’s crazy that we have three guys in here that had a broken face and it’s something with baseball,” Calhoun said. “We all have similar stories.”
The peers have discussed their shared misfortune, but they didn’t take the same approaches in their returns to the field.
Calhoun sought the help of a mental skills coach in Dallas and forced himself to engage with the internal trepidation he felt in the batter’s box in the years that followed. Calhoun didn’t start feeling like himself again until last season, and he didn’t have any positive results to show for that until this past spring, when the Yanks’ non-roster invite looked like the player who hit 21 home runs for Texas in 2019.
But Hamilton told The News that he preferred a different approach. “Try not to think about it,” the reserved pitcher said. Hamilton added that, unlike Calhoun, he didn’t seek any professional help.
“No, never did that,” he said.
Stanton also felt that he had “no option but to leave it in the past.” Major league at-bats are already difficult. He didn’t want to let fear manifest into another obstacle at the plate.
“It’s quite simple. It’s like being in the minor leagues. Do you want to get to the big leagues? Or not?” Stanton told The News, comparing his post-injury mindset to that of a prospect. “You have to do exact things to be successful to get there. And the thing to stay in the big leagues and stay successful in this case was to not have it be a factor.”
While Stanton tried to put his incident out of his mind, he certainly remembered Fiers when the two crossed paths in 2018, the former’s first season with the Yankees.
Fiers, a Tiger at that point, hit Stanton again during a game in early June. Stanton first responded with words for the pitcher as Detroit catcher James McCann intervened. Later in the game, Stanton crushed a 456-foot homer off Fiers, emphatically flipped his bat as he admired the blast, and pointed at the righty as he crossed home plate.
“He wasn’t trying to hit me in that situation,” Stanton said at the time. “Still, with the history of what happened, don’t hit me.”
Stanton, who wears a chin guard on his helmet — like Calhoun — said it didn’t take long for him to get cozy upon his return in 2015, even as pitchers frequently tested his courage.
“The next year or two, a lot of people started to throw up, face level, just to see where I was at, if it was gonna bug me or not,” Stanton said.
Hamilton, who also endured a shoulder-hurting, car-totaling auto accident with his fiancé in 2019, wanted to return the same season his facial injuries occurred. The White Sox shut that idea down real quick, though.
Nonetheless, Hamilton wasn’t scared of taking another line drive to the head upon his return to the mound, not that the first one struck him while on the bump. He did have one worry, though.
“Teeth falling out while I was throwing,” he said, as he had some issues with the dental adhesive that doctors used on him. “That was pretty much my biggest concern.
“They would fall out eating soup and stuff.”
While Hamilton and Stanton were quick to put their traumatic encounters behind them, Calhoun struggled with anxiety at the plate for some time.
He made a little bit of progress after the pitch to his face ruined his 2020 season, but another ball to his left forearm interrupted his 2021 campaign.
“I wasn’t comfortable at first stepping back in there. And then when I did get comfortable, about 14 months later, I broke my arm,” Calhoun said. “That kind of put me back to square one.”
But Calhoun welcomed assistance from others. In addition to the mental skills coach, his father, Willie Sr., provided inspiration, clarity and perspective after his child grew frustrated with himself for not moving past the ordeal.
As a longtime corrections officer at San Quentin State Prison in California, the father became well-versed in “turning it on and turning it off.” So when Willie Sr. sent his son motivational text messages every morning throughout Calhoun’s mental recovery, they carried weight.
“He’s been there with me through my very lows,” Calhoun said. “The biggest thing was just him reminding me every single day, ‘At the end of the day, this is a game that you played when you were a little kid. You enjoyed it when you were a little kid. Just treat it the same way.’”
It took some time, but those words eventually resonated with Calhoun.
“Everyone’s different,” he said of his teammates’ contrasting responses. But now Calhoun is back in the majors, playing for the Yankees, and feeling like his old self.
“I’m finally to the point where I’m at ease,” he said with a smile on a face that suffered severe injuries just a few years ago. “I can be myself again.”
()