Baseball star DJ Stewart suffers concussion after Falcon of the year

There’s not a hole in the world big enough for this baseball star to crawl into and hide after executing a blunder of spectacular proportions.

Orioles outfielder DJ Stewart will likely end up on ESPN’s Not Top 10 with his misplaying of a fly ball Tuesday night, and he left Camden Yards with an injury in the process.

The bottom-dwelling Orioles entered the game having lost their last 13 games to the Yankees at home, and Stewart quickly showed why. In the fourth inning, the 25-year-old prospect charged in from left field and attempted to make a diving catch on a shallow fly ball. Stewart, who has spent most of this season in the minors, dived too early and the ball plunked him straight on the side of his head.

As he was prone on the deck a huge red welt on the left side of his forehead began to appear.

Stewart, a 2015 first-round pick, remained in the game for the rest of the half-inning, but was removed for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the fourth. The Orioles announced after the game that he had suffered a concussion on the play and has been placed on concussion protocol which will see him rested for a mandatory seven days.

Baltimore manager Brandon Hyde said after the game Stewart had showed no noticeable signs of concussion when first assessed by medical staff and was even able to crack jokes about his unfortunate blunder.

“He actually joked with me when I went out there, saying, ‘We have to stop meeting like this,’” Hyde said, according to MLB.com.

“I thought that showed some pretty good awareness. Then he got checked out, and as the inning went along, he started feeling a little funny, a little dizzy, so we got him out.”

DJ Stewart suffered a concussion on this play. pic.twitter.com/1DxiyqkE6z

— Jace Evans (@JaceTEvans) August 7, 2019

It was an absolute nightmare on a night that was supposed to turn out very different for Stewart after celebrating his return to the Orioles following his demotion to a Triple-A team in Norfolk.

The Yankees had already set the MLB record for single-season home runs at a visiting ballpark against the Orioles on Monday night, and added six more on Tuesday for good measure in their 9-4 win.

Stewart had just been recalled from Triple-A Norfolk on Tuesday, marking the second big-league opportunity for the outfielder after his first was derailed by injury.

He missed three weeks after spraining his right ankle in an early June collision in Texas. Now Stewart has landed on the seven-day concussion injured list, per MLB rules.

“It definitely took longer than I expected. I didn’t think I’d be out that long at all,” Stewart told reporters before the game. “I’m going to go out there and show what I can do.”

Well, so much for that.