What Happens When You Break Your Hand In MLB

Hey, what's up fellas? How you doing? Manettinelli here. All right. So today we're going to talk about the time I broke my hand playing baseball with the Padres. I'm going to give you a lot of insight into how I broke my hand. A lot of people say, how do you break your hand playing baseball? I'm going to talk about how we fixed it. And it's not so easy. You've heard people talk about second opinions before, and I had to get a second opinion. So I'll tell you how that works. I'll tell you how teams check you out. How do you get to the team doctor? All that stuff. So let's get into it. First off, I broke my hand right here. Um, I don't know if you can see that there's a, there's a scar that runs from, uh, from like basically here to here. It's called the hammate bone, very common injury in baseball. I also actually had three surgeries on my wrist. I don't know if you can see that, but I have a big scar right there that they went into and clean that up. And so we'll talk about the hand surgery and how the wrist was related and all that stuff. So, uh, first this is a hammate bone. Hammate bone is just a little bone that rests right here in your hand. Doesn't really do a whole lot. I don't believe, I don't know why you have it. It's shaped like a J and so when it breaks the bottom part of the J just kind of cracks and falls off. And, um, sometimes it cracks and doesn't fall off, which was my case. And most of the time it cracks and falls off and then they just have to go in and remove the J. And so what happened with me, I was in, I was in triple a with, with Portland. Um, I was with the Padres 2008 and late in the 2007 season, I did start to feel a little bit of, I don't want to say discomfort, but I could tell something was a little bit off with my hand and I didn't think it was anything serious. And 2008 started. And I remember, uh, I took one swing, I swung and missed it. And most, it's funny, most wrist and hand injuries when you swing and miss, that's when you feel it the most. And so I swung and missed and I said, ow, what was that? Felt like a pain that went kind of up the side of my hand. And, you know, I thought maybe I like pinched a nerve or something like that, tweak something. And, and so I didn't really say a whole lot about it, but as the season went on and not every swing and miss, but every so often I get that jolting pain. And so I talked to, I talked to our training staff about it and they said, well, it's, can you still swing? I said, yeah, I can still swing. It's just, it's randomly kind of hurting. They said, okay, then, you know, just keep going. Just try to play with it. All right. So I continued to play and, uh, every now and then I keep getting pain. Okay. Now this happened for two years, basically 2008 and, and 2009. Um, now in 2009, I was hurt for most of the year. So it didn't affect me as much, but I could still feel it. And to be honest, I kind of just, I kind of just tried to play with it, um, towards the end of 2009, it started to hurt a little bit worse. And at that point I was taking, I was trying to take medicine to help it not hurt as bad. That was kind of the first step is to try to take stuff to just kind of get me through the season. And I got through the season. Well, in 2010, I went to spring training and I hit great, but that's when it really started to hurt me and would continue to kind of do the same thing. I would take this medicine to try to help, uh, help with inflammation. And eventually at the end of spring training, I, I, I couldn't play anymore. It was hurting like almost every swing, every swing I took, especially a swing and a miss, which luckily I didn't do very much in 2010. But again, I get the sharp pain felt like somebody at this point was like stabbing me right in the side of the hand. I've never been stabbed in the side of the hand, but if I had been, I mean, I imagine that's what it would feel like. And so I went in one day and I told the trainer, I'm like, I can't, I can't do it anymore. Like I've been trying to take this medicine. It's not helping. It's not helping at all. At that point, I think I was taking medicine to help just with the pain and I couldn't do it. And I said, I'm, we got to get this checked. And so I went to the doctor, I went to the Padres doctor and they flew me out to San Diego. So I got to San Diego and they checked it and they said, well, you know, you've got a lot of inflammation over here, a lot of inflammation, but everything looks okay. So they gave me a cortisone shot, cortisone shots. That's like the number one thing that doctors go to, especially with baseball players. And so put a little cortisone in there and usually cortisone can work wonders. I hurt my knee one year and they put cortisone in there. They, they got it right in the right spot. Oh my Lord. I went from not being able to walk to like three days later being like Superman. I was never Superman, but I felt like Superman compared to what I felt like before. So this stuff is like, it's impressive, but they put it in there. Three days later, you know, they, they put you in like this little soft, um, I don't want to call it a cast, but a brace where you can't move. And they're like, Oh, three to five days, you'll feel great. Got out three to five days later, took a swing and said, not great, not great at all. Not even close to great. And so they said, okay, come back out here. So fly back out. They checked me. Yeah, there's some inflammation in there. Let's uh, let's do a cortisone shot again. So I did a cortisone shot. Um, then I ended up doing a PRP shot, which is like a plasma, something or other. I don't know. They take your, they take the plasma from your blood or something. They spin it in a machine, they inject it back in. I don't know. I'm probably going to grow a third head. I only have one head. I'm probably going to grow a second head at some point in my life because of that. And so that did nothing at all. And so I said, finally, I'm like, listen, you guys have shot me with multiple cortisone shots and you put plasma alien stuff into my, my wrist and nothing is working. So my agent said he's going to go for a second opinion. I don't know if teams like when you go to second opinions, but listen, I've flown to San Diego like three times and nothing helped. So I went to a second opinion. I went to the Arizona Diamondbacks doctor who was actually in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I was still in Arizona at this point. And so I walked in and he did a CT scan, I believe it was called. And I went into his office and he walked right in and he said, Hey Matt, you got a broken hand. You have broken handmade. I was like, really? I'm like, no one's ever told me that. He was like, yeah, it's right here. And he showed me like the scan and it was a, it was a J looking bone with a huge crack in it. They're like a line that went right across. He's like, there's your broken bone. I was like, wow, that's pretty clear. He's like, did you not get a CT scan before? I'm like, nah, I don't, I never got a CT scan. I got a lot of MRIs, never a CT scan. So he's like, well, there's your problem. So I went and got, um, surgery for that. He did it. You know, they put you to sleep, boom, they go in, they fix it on up and that's it. It's a four to six week recovery. So I went back to Arizona. Laura was out there living with me and I just had a, I had a cast on for two weeks. Take the cast off after two weeks and you know, your hands really stiff. I don't know if anyone's had a cast on for two weeks, but like you can barely move it. It's pretty tender right here with stitches, excuse me, work. So you just got to kind of massage it. You got to move it around. I, I picked up pennies for my, uh, my rehab. You like pick up a penny and then pick up a penny with your other fingers and pick up a penny with your other and you just kind of go back and forth and they do ultrasound and all this crazy stuff on you. They actually, I don't know if you can still see it. They did some, Oh, you can. Okay. I don't know if you guys can see that mark right there. There's a mark right there and there's another mark right there. So they used to put this thing that would give you like electric stimulus. I don't know what I'm saying, but it would like give you like, it would feel really hot and the one time I'm using it and they're like turning it up and I'm like, I'm feeling it burning. I'm like, I can hurt, but I'm not going to tell him it hurts. Like I'm getting rehab and I'm not going to tell a doctor. Owie, it hurts. So I was like, I'm fine. I'm fine. And then it got to the point where I was like, Holy ----, I feel like I'm on fire right now. So I was like, yo, yo, yo, yo, turn it down, turn it down. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, turns it down. I'm like, I don't, I feel like I'm getting burnt. We took the thing off. I had a hole in my wrist here and here. It was like, it was like black. And he was like, whoa, we did burn you. I was like, yeah, yeah, I know. That's what I was saying. I'm on fire. And, uh, it never went away. I have two scars right there from when they burnt the hell out of me trying to fix my wrist. I don't know. I think they were pissed at me and they said, just burn this kid's wrist off, right? I just burn it off. So, um, anyway, so that's what happened. I finally got back after six weeks. I started swinging and I said, man, my, my wrist, it's still, it's, it still hurts. And so they sent me back to the doctor and they did an MRI this time. And he said, yeah, you've got, you know, you've got a lot of inflammation and stuff over here and you've gotten your cortisones and all that didn't work. I went to Dr. Jupiter, Dr. Jupiter, I believe it was the Red Sox doctor at one point. He was fantastic. And he was like, yeah, you got, he's like, you have inflammation, but you have cysts, you have a bunch of cysts in there. And I'm like, oh, cysts, that doesn't sound good. So they had to go in and cut the cysts out and fix me on up. And that ruined my season and knocked me out for the rest of the year and for the rest of my career, I had to continually go get surgeries. But, um, I never had a Padres doctor work on me. Interesting enough, I had the Diamondbacks doctor work on me and I had a Red Sox doctor work on me. And then, um, then the Padres released me, they non tender me, maybe they were mad I didn't go to their doctors. And then I had to get another surgery and another surgery. And then I was supposed to get another surgery. So I never had a Padres doctor work on me, but a lot of times you hear that second opinion, right? What does that mean? Why is he going on a second opinion? This is just an example of it. You have a doctor that, um, you know, things can be complicated and maybe doctors are trying stuff and it's just not working. And as a player, you just want to play. Like you just want to get on the field. You just want to fix yourself, right? It's no fun trying to play. It's very hard to play the sport when you're healthy. It's obviously a very tough sport and you're playing at a really high level, but to try to play it in pain is really, really difficult. It makes things quite miserable and you can't practice. It's not just the game. You can't really practice. And to get better at a sport, you have to practice. Alan Iverson didn't have to practice, but I had the practice a lot. Even the most practice in the world couldn't get me good enough. So, but that's the frustrating part. And so eventually you're, you're entitled to go for a second opinion. And so your agent just says, Hey, we want to go to a second opinion. And I don't even know if the team has to say, okay, I don't think they do. I think you can just go. I mean, they could be pissed at you and release you. I'm sure if they wanted to, but luckily for me, I went to my second opinion and they found out that I had a broken hand and a wrist issue and had a bunch of surgeries. And unfortunately my wrist was arthritic. They could never really, they can never really fix it. They just had to do yearly cleanups of it. You know, I developed cysts and inflammation that really would hurt. But I was never able to completely get rid of it. Dr. Jupiter did say one year that the bone right here, this big bone on the side of your wrist, he said that he could remove it and it would solve the problem because I have two bones that would rub up against each other because there was, it was arthritic. There was no joint there, I guess. He said, we could remove it, but we haven't done that to a baseball player before. I don't have any idea if you would be able to hit again. I said, it's okay, Doc. I can't hit anyway. I'm hitting 180. So go ahead and remove it. I didn't say that actually. I just said, yeah, I don't want to take that chance. You know, you take the bone out and I can't swing. Like that's the end of my career. And he said, yeah, I agree with you. So we kept playing and Hey, what do you know? It was the end of my career. Anyway, I got released and never played again. Now I'm coaching and making videos for YouTube for you guys. So that's how it works. That's what happened when I broke my hand in second opinions and all that. So let me know if you have any questions in the comment section below, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, give it a thumbs up, all that good stuff. I got to go drive my son to school. So I'll talk to you later. If you've enjoyed this video and want to learn more about building the elite swing, check out our new course. We have over two hours of content, almost 30 hitting drills. We break down the exact mechanics that you're going to want to implement into your swing. I've put the link in the description. If you want to go check it out.