Royce Lewis was involved in one of the more terrifying collisions in recent memory during Sunday’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians.
Lewis was trying to beat out a throw to first base when he collided with Gabriel Arias, who was attempting to record the out. It wasn’t that Arias was racing Lewis to the bag, rather he appeared to be put of position and directly in the base path behind the bag.
It was a bang-bang play, but it resulted in Lewis being flipped into the air landing on his face and neck. Thankfully it appears Lewis’ helmet saved him from what initially looked to be a serious injury. The angle at which his neck bends was hard to watch, but somehow Lewis was able to walk off the field under his own power after only being down for a few minutes.
They were a tense few minutes, though, both given the optics of the injury and the context of Lewis’ injury history.
It doesn’t appear that Lewis will miss any significant time after the scary collision, but he didn’t sound very happy after the game when talking about what happened.
Royce Lewis comments on scary collision with Gabriel Arias
Lewis spoke to the media after the loss and sounded less than pleased with both the incident and his recent string of injury luck.
“It was a split-second decision of I don’t even know where to go,” Lewis said. “When you’re running so hard just to try to beat out the play, just to make the game tied, and he just gets in your way the last second, I really had nowhere to go. I don’t even know if I went into him or over him. I don’t remember.”
Royce Lewis said the loss hurt more. Admits he was shaken up. Didn't know where to go. Doesn't remember the collision: "I’m tired of running into people and walls. It’s just the worst luck right there." #MNTwins
— DanHayesMLB (@DanHayesMLB) June 4, 2023
He’s not wrong. One of the first thing fans thought of after watching the collision was that Lewis was once again on the wrong side of a bad situation through seemingly no fault of his own. Tearing his ACL twice felt more like a freak accident than anything else, and the scary collision at first base was the result of another player being out of position.
The discourse about the collision, specifically Arias causing it, has seemingly outlasted any major injury concern for Lewis. After the game manager Rocco Baldelli noted that a cut to the forehead was the biggest injury that Lewis suffered, as he somehow avoided a concussion or anything more serious.