SEATTLE – A feel-good win for the Yankees quickly turned somber in the ninth inning Monday night.
Oswaldo Cabrera scored on a sacrifice fly but in the process suffered what appeared to be a serious ankle injury that forced him to leave the field on a stretcher in an ambulance with his left leg in an air cast.
The energetic, always-smiling and beloved third baseman had to sidestep the catcher to avoid a tag but then as he pivoted back toward the plate, his ankle appeared to give out. He hit the deck and reached out to touch home, but his ankle was bent the wrong way as trainer Tim Lentych immediately raced out to tend to Cabrera.
A hush fell over T-Mobile Park as medical personnel quickly called for the ambulance and Cabrera writhed in pain on the ground.
Manager Aaron Boone and a few teammates surrounded home plate while in the visiting dugout, the Yankees looked on with concern, many with their heads in their hands, for their teammate, who has always been a bundle of joy since he arrived in the big leagues in 2022.
“That’s terrible,” said Aaron Judge, who hit the sacrifice fly and then quickly got back to the plate to be with Cabrera. “Especially how much Cabrera means to this team, for him to get hurt on a play like that, it speaks volumes of the type of guy he is. … Everybody in here feels terrible, just because we know how much he works, how hard he works, how much he loves and cares for everybody in this room, the way he would treat every game, every day he got to be up here was such a blessing.
“You never like seeing that happen to anybody, but especially a guy like that that means so much to us, it’s tough.”
Before he got into the ambulance and headed to a local hospital with Lentych, Cabrera did ask Judge if he had scored on the play, which provided a sliver of levity in an otherwise awful situation.
“You blink your eyes and the game can be taken away from you,” Clarke Schmidt said.
Watching a teammate suffer the kind of gruesome injury that will almost certainly cost him significant time is always devastating.
But it was even more so given what Cabrera means to his teammates with his uplifting personality.
“We all love baseball,” said Trent Grisham, who hit two home runs in the 11-5 win. “You watch Cabby play baseball and you know he loves this game. That’s how he shows up every day. On top of that, he’s one of the best human beings in the clubhouse. Just stings and hurts a lot to see somebody that’s so good, one of the best of us, go down with that.”
“Your heart breaks anytime something serious happens, but all of us … that know Oswaldo Cabrera and what a special person he is, that probably hits home even more,” Boone said.
The brutal injury cast a pall on the Yankees’ win over the Mariners that was buoyed by a six-run fifth inning.
But the Yankees’ minds were with Cabrera afterwards in a mostly quiet clubhouse. The Yankees’ winning music playlist still played over the speakers, but more as background noise than a celebratory soundtrack.
“I think everyone understands it was a pretty serious situation,” Boone said. “Just praying for our guy Cabby tonight and hoping for the best. Trust that he’s in good hands as he goes through the night. Obviously a great game in a lot of ways, but a lot of guys feeling for their teammate, who’s the best of them.”
The injury could have lingering effects on the 2025 Yankees, in particular creating a hole at third base after Cabrera had done his best to fill in there to start the season.
But on Monday night, that was all secondary to the crushing loss that the Yankees were feeling without the 26-year-old’s infectious spirit in the room.
“This is a tough one, especially a guy that’s grinded his whole life and finally got an opportunity to be our everyday guy and has been excelling at it,” Judge said.
Said Grisham: “The way he does everything, the way he shows up with a smile, the way he lays it all out there, the way he cares for other people, it pours out of him.”
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