MILWAUKEE -- New York Mets second baseman Neil Walker was in good enough spirits postgame that he joked he should have worn a chest protector.
Still, he had a scary moment during Thursday’s 5-2 win against the Milwaukee Brewers.
A groundball clocked at 107 mph off the bat of Hernan Perez struck Walker in the chest on a short hop in the seventh inning. Walker remained in the game until the top of the ninth, when Matt Reynolds pinch hit for him.
Walker had confessed to manager Terry Collins that he wasn’t feeling 100 percent.
“That ball hit him right in the heart -- in the rib cage -- and he couldn’t catch his breath. And then between innings he got a little dizzy,” Collins said. “So I got him out of there.”
Walker was examined by a doctor at the stadium, who did not deem an X-ray necessary.
“When I got out there, I thought he might have broken a rib,” Collins said.
Said Walker: “I pretty much got hit in the meat of my chest. When you get a ball close to your heart and close to your rib cage there, you just want to make sure there’s nothing. I didn’t want to go out there and dive or do something that might aggravate it more if there was something going on. Fortunately he didn’t see any issues and didn’t think that an X-ray or anything was necessary.
"We’ll play it day by day. I felt OK, and I feel OK now. But I was a little lightheaded and didn’t feel quite right for a few minutes. So I thought it best just to shut it down for the day.”
