Jesse Biddle got hit on the head. Not by a baseball, but baseball or even softball size hail in a summer hailstorm that devastated the Reading area. If you look at the pics of some of the devastation, you will see that this was no normal summer thunderstorm. Biddle was never the same after incident in 2014. Biddle suffered a concussion…or maybe he didn't, if you ask Phillies general manager Ruben Amaro, Jr.
Biddle described the experience to 6abc's Jeff Skversky back in Feburary:
"My front windshield was about to cave in. My back windshield did cave in. It kind of exploded and glass got everywhere. I couldn't see anything. I had to get out of the car; I couldn't drive it. It stopped working. I ran to find cover; while I was running, I really, seriously got blasted on the back of the head by a hailstone."
That sounds like a concussion. In a piece from Jim Salisbury on CSN Philly.com today, Biddle acknowledged that he had a concussion. But then, his general manager refuted that.
“I believe with the way it lines up, I was concussed and I was pitching with a concussion,” he said. “I saw a concussion specialist and he said I had a concussion.”
Amaro this week acknowledged that Biddle had “concussion symptoms,” but added, “I don’t know if it was a full-blown concussion.” He went on to say, “That wasn't the reason we gave him the break.”
Amaro's comments have upset some. Brad Engler at Crashburn Alley was not happy with the general manager's assessment:
There are a couple things I don’t like about this. First off, yes, there are differing levels of severity of traumatic brain injury. But when the injury in question was followed by “concussion symptoms”, many of which can cause the very issues Biddle was facing last year, what is the point of Amaro parsing the diagnosis of a head injury as if he’s a medical professional? It’s also kind of baffling that he would use the term “full-blown concussion” so casually. Google finds about 13 thousand references to the phrase, compared to some 16 million for “concussion”. So yeah, he’s basically making things up. About one of his players’ brains. Wise.
Engler goes on to say that taking out Biddle for a "mental break" would be damaging baseball-wise, too, should the Phillies ever look to trade Biddle.
Professional sports has seen more and more lately, the need for a serious look at head trauma injuries. By denying the situation, Amaro gives the impression that the Phillies are not seriously looking at such injuries carefully. Amaro may be right, but that is not a good impression to give.
