WASHINGTON – There was a blank space at the top of the Braves lineup when it was scrawled onto the dry-erase board in the visitor's clubhouse Sunday morning, but Jason Heyward let manager Freddie Gonzalez know that his name should be filled in there. And so it was, neck spasms be damned.
Heyward had spasms and a subsequent headache after fouling off a ball in the first inning Saturday night, but played the rest of that game and wanted back in the lineup Sunday despite some lingering stiffness and headache.
“It feels a little better after I got loosened up,” Heyward said Sunday morning. “It’s more annoying than anything. Just takes a little concentration.”
After going 0-for-5 and striking out twice Sunday, including with two runners on base to end the game, Heyward said the neck didn’t affect him. He went 0-for-10 with four strikeouts during the two weekend games.
Coincidentally, Sunday was eight months to the day when Heyward left a game at Washington with a neck strain after fouling off a pitch in the first inning. Same city, same inning, same cause. He stayed in that 2013 game for one more pitch, popped out, and was replaced before the bottom of the first inning by manager Fredi Gonzalez.
But not this time.
“He played through it, said ‘I don’t want to come out,’” Gonzalez said Sunday.
Before the weekend o-for-10, Heyward had been 3-for-13 with a home run, three walks, four strikeouts and a .412 on-base percentage through the Braves’ first four games. He struggled at the plate Saturday, but the Braves got two hits apiece from the next four batters in the lineup in a 6-2 win, their fourth in a row since an opening-day loss.
Heyward didn’t want to sit and watch the last game of the road trip from the bench Sunday.
“We’re playing some good baseball,” he said before the game. “That’s what’s fun. It’s not fun not playing.”
Two weeks after the August incident in Washington, Heyward had his jaw smashed by a Jon Niese fastball in New York. He required surgery in which two metal plate were used to repair the broken jaw, and many wondered if Heyward would play again in 2013. But he was back in one month, in time for the last 10 games of the regular season and the division series.
“That was well worth coming back for – playoffs, and being part of something going on that was fun,” said Heyward, who still has the surgical plates in his jaw and wears a flap extension on his batting helmet to protect his face.
