Ned Yost says deer-stand accident could have killed him
Kansas City Royals manager Ned Yost was in a lot of pain last week when he was fixing a deer stand at his home in Georgia and fell from a tree. Yost broke his pelvis and some ribs in the fall, but we’re learning now that doctors and even Yost himself feared it was going to be much worse. Perhaps even fatal.
Yost said if he didn’t have his cellphone and wasn’t able to call for help, he could have bled out. Later, a surgeon told Yost a number of people have died from similar falls.
Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com talked to Yost on Monday, who described everything that happened after the fall. If you thought this was “Man falls out of tree and hurt himself,” it was a lot more serious:
Ned Yost is back at home after his horrific fall that shattered his pelvis. He told me, “There’s no doubt I would have bled out if I didn’t have my cellphone with me. There was nobody that was coming. Nobody would have found me. I would have been dead by nightfall.”
— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) November 13, 2017
Ned Yost also told me, "The trauma surgeon said, ‘Man, Ned, I was really scared about you. We’ve seen these things before – this is a 25-30 percent mortality rate. You were crashing on the table. We couldn’t get the bleeding stopped. I thought we were going to lose you.'"
— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) November 13, 2017
Ned Yost also said he will be in a wheelchair for at least two months but hopes to be able to move around normally by Spring Training. He tells me he feels "like a lucky man" right now.
— Jeffrey Flanagan (@FlannyMLB) November 13, 2017
That’s pretty brutal. Yost, 63, is an avid outdoorsman and hunter, so we can assume it wasn’t his first go-round with a deer stand. Reports at the time said the deer stand just gave way as Yost was working on it.
Hurray for cellphones — and for Yost being all right.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
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