Harrison Bader has spent all year fighting his own body, and his body just lost in the most absurd way imaginable. The Giants outfielder hasn't played since late May because of left plantar fasciitis, and according to reports out of San Francisco, he made things dramatically worse by crashing a scooter into the back of a fire truck around 2 AM, at which point the truck rolled over the same already-injured foot. You cannot write a freakier ending to a lost season.
This is taking freak baseball injuries to a whole different level
Bader's foot problems didn't start with the scooter. He landed on the injured list in late May after aggravating the plantar fasciitis on a defensive play, and he'd already missed about a month earlier in the season with a hamstring issue. He was reportedly gearing up to see a specialist about the foot when the crash happened, which makes the timing almost cruel.
Barstool Baseball's account of it lines up with the wider reporting: Bader ran his scooter into the back of the fire truck late at night, and the truck's wheel then rolled over the foot he was already trying to protect. It's the kind of sequence that sounds made up until you see it confirmed by multiple outlets.
Giants manager Tony Vitello has since confirmed Bader is done for the year, closing the book on a season that was supposed to be his first full year in San Francisco after signing there in the offseason. Instead it turns into a cautionary tale about late-night scooter rides and fire trucks that don't see you coming.
There's no real silver lining here beyond the fact that nobody else got hurt. Bader now heads into the offseason nursing a foot injury that got dramatically worse through no fault of the Giants' training staff, and the franchise is left explaining to fans why one of their outfielders is on ice because of a 2 AM scooter mishap instead of, you know, baseball.