A year after his infamous Bernie's Slide incident, Dodgers reporter gets 'redemption'

Even sitting in the Los Angeles Dodgers dugout and already talking about the famous Bernie's slide incident, David Vassegh was hearing about it.

"Did you go down the slide?" Dodgers starting pitcher Tony Gonsolin asked as he strolled by.

Vassegh hasn't and he won't, even though he said he started to sense the good-natured pressure from players to repeat his infamous 2022 viral moment. But if he actually listened to them?

"(My wife) would change the locks."

Vassegh's assignment this year is radio-only, working with AM 570 LA Sports. But last August when the Dodgers came to Milwaukee, Vassegh was working as a sideline reporter for the Dodgers television broadcast, as well. In a pregame bit gone horribly wrong, Vassegh's trip down the famous left-field slide attached to Bernie's Chalet ended in fractures to his wrist and ribs, and somehow it became one of the funniest moments of the year.

Announcers Joe Davis and Nomar Garciaparra couldn't contain their amusement with the situation as Vassegh raised his casted right arm to the camera in a moment of impeccable comic timing that confirmed the painful outcome of the slide.

But though Vassegh kept working that night (and even recorded a pregame interview with Justin Turner in the dugout before leaving for the hospital), the scar will indeed be permanent. Vassegh had a metal plate inserted into his wrist a week later, then endured physical therapy through the month of November to regain mobility.

"It was something TV wanted me to do for the broadcast," he said. "Once they brought it to me, then I got excited and started hyping it up the week before. That's why people assumed that it was something I always wanted to do. That never was on my bucket list, but I can check it off now."

It became an internet sensation. Turner playfully brought tape up to Bernie's Chalet to create a chalk outline commemorating the occasion, including the words "Holy crap" that Vassegh had repeatedly yelled on his way down the slide. Vassegh said his wife never curses and often uses the expression, which is why he figures the TV-friendly phrase was in his mind.

Vassegh only missed three games for the surgery itself and kept working the rest of the year.

"I couldn't go do that and go back to the hotel room and curl up in the fetal position, I couldn't have looked myself in the mirror the next day," he said. "I still have a responsibility to the broadcast to go back. They're counting on me."

He said one of the hardest parts was alerting his wife, who happened to be in town visiting family in Wauwatosa, on his way to the emergency room. Her grandmother had died the day before, and the injury added to the emotion of the week.

But a year later, Vassegh still has a sense of humor about it. He participated in a video that shows him seemingly preparing for 'redemption,' only to reveal him sliding down the kids version of the slide, located in the field level play area.

"There was really no reason to put on a show," he said, referring to the fact that he's not on TV broadcasts this time. "I just did that (video) for closure. For America."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: After Bernie's Slide incident, Dodgers reporter gets 'redemption'