Denard Span of the Minnesota Twins has been befallen by a concussion on June 3rd. However it’s not that we are more than a week late to report this news, it’s that Span played following the concussion, from FS North;
Span collided with Royals catcher Brayan Pena when he tried to stretch a triple into an inside-the-park home run last Friday. He stayed in the game and played again Monday against Cleveland but was kept out of Minnesota’s lineup for three straight games, including Thursday’s series opener against Texas.
The reasoning for him playing is unclear at this point, but it seems that Span was unaware of the symptoms, or at the very least did not report them right away. Span had a spell of “dizziness” in 2009 that made him miss a lot of the month of June. This may have been the reasoning for his delayed entrance into the 7-day DL for concussions. Not only was there a possible lack of awareness; the general interpretation of the injury may be counterproductive as well;
“They felt like it was more of a mild concussion and that some of the symptoms that I had in ’09 flared up because of the concussion,” Span said. “Two years ago, they gave me certain exercises to do to kind of maintain or keep it in check. Even still, I still do exercises once a day just to get myself where I need to be.”
Grrr, the labeling of “mild concussion” is not was is needed. All concussions are serious in nature, you don’t ever have a “mild fracture” or a “mild ligament tear”, why is that concussions are labeled as mild? The good news is that Span feels that the new DL classification for MLB players suffering concussions is a good thing.
The total MLB players listed with a concussion is four to this point;
- Denard Span
- Brian Robers
- Chris Dickerson
- Erick Almonte
The Concussion Blog 