Juan Soto on Wednesday night made New York Yankees fans hold their breath before he took their breath away.
Soto belted a two-run, go-ahead home run in the bottom of the sixth inning to help power the New York Yankees to a 4-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. That blew Yankees fans away.
What made them hold their breath was that Soto, in a dramatic injury scare, fouled a ball off of his right foot and proceeded to hobble down the first-base line in pain before falling to his knees.
But the Yankees slugger dug back into the batter's box moments later and drilled a 79-MPH knucklecurve into the right-field seats, hopping on one foot as he watched it fly before jogging around the bases.
After the game, Soto admitted he was in a lot of pain before slugging the long ball.
"It was a lot of pain," Soto said. "At the end of the day, I tried to focus on the at-bat. Sometimes when you hit yourself like that, you kind of go away a little bit from the at-bat. So I tried to just focus, take my time, go in there and make good contact."
How long did it take Soto to realize he was fine and could continue the at-bat?
"A couple minutes," Soto said. "When I hit it, I knew there wasn't anything broke right when I hit it, but it was really painful and I tired to put weight on my foot but i just fell down."
Soto's teammate Jazz Chisholm Jr., who delivered a walk-off hit in the 11th inning, told reporters that he and his teammates could tell that the slugger was about to "do something special" right before his sixht-inning homer.
"The way he was looking around, you could see in his eyes, he was about to do something special," Chisholm said.
More of the Latest Around MLB
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Yankees' Juan Soto Homered Just Two Pitches After Dramatic Injury Scare.
