One night before the induction of San Francisco Giants second baseman/wheelie enthusiast Jeff Kent into the Hall of Fame, Harrison Bader had a setback in his recovery from plantar fasciitis thanks to a scooter accident. Yes, really.
This is honestly far more baffling than the traffic accident that nearly blinded San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan. A player who has missed the last two months of the baseball season with a foot problem nonetheless went for a late night scoot sesh, crashed, and exacerbated his foot issue. Harrison Bader is 32 years old.
This isn’t even the first time Bader has crashed a scooter late at night. When he was a sophomore at the University of Florida in 2014, Bader was suspended for 19 games after drunkenly crashing his scooter into a parked truck. There’s been no indication that alcohol was involved in the most recent injury, but describing the accident as happening “on Saturday night/early Sunday morning” strongly implies there may have been some revelry involved.
Of course, manager Tony Vitello doesn’t know anything, and he didn’t ask.
“He didn’t provide a lot of details to me, and [I’ll] let the medical staff and the front office sort that stuff out,” Vitello told reporters before Tuesday’s game. Way to stay on top of things, Tony V!
Bader was supposed to fly to Indianapolis to see a foot specialist on Monday, which he did, but that was spent evaluating the new injury, maybe digging broken glass and gravel out of his foot while explaining that while scooters may seem “rad,” he’s a professional athlete on a $20M contract and not an adventurous tween defying his parents. The team said he’d have an MRI Tuesday, after he goes shopping for Rollerblades and a pair of wraparound sunglasses.
It’s been a rough day for the Giants when it comes to injuries. Tuesday afternoon, the team announced that Casey Schmitt had a (likely season-ending) meniscus tear. A few hours later, they announced starter Trevor McDonald had a definitely season-ending UCL tear in his elbow, and would undergo Tommy John surgery.
It’s also been a rough week for the entire organization when it comes to scooter incidents. Saturday, R.C. Dinger, the mascot of the Sacramento River Cats, the team’s AAA affiliate, crashed into Alek Thomas while cruising along the warning track. We are nearly positive that Bader was not in the mascot costume.
What exactly is R.C. Dinger? A cat that lives in the American River and shops at that one store in Old Town Sac that sells candy out of giant barrels and somehow didn’t go out of business during a global pandemic? But we digress.
We all knew there’d be no end to the improbable, terrible disasters that would befall the 2026 Giants. But no one had “scooter accident” on their bongo card. And if anyone did, that bingo card would find away to severely cut Logan Webb’s pitching hand and end his season.
