We’re going to go ahead and call the winner in the Toughest Sumbitch of 2026 balloting: first-year Baltimore Orioles manager Craig Albernaz.
Albernaz took a foul ball to the face in the fifth inning in last night’s 9-7 win over Arizona, stayed in the game, sent the message to everybody through his bench coach afterward that it was all no big deal, then revealed today that he has a broken jaw and seven fractures in his cheek.
He won’t need surgery, he told reporters today, ahead of Game 2 with the Diamonbacks, but he does have to look forward to eating baby food for the next six weeks.
It looked bad last night, when a screamer off the bat of O’s second baseman Jeremiah Jackson hit Albernaz square in the mouth, right up the A gap.
Word last night, from the game recap on ESPN.com, was that “Albernaz wasn’t seriously hurt,” though we could see from TV that he was taken into the tunnel to be treated by the team’s medical staff.
“Just as a precaution. He’s going to get it scanned,” said bench coach Donnie Ecker, who filled in for Albernaz at the postgame news conference.
Jackson, after almost killing his manager with the foul ball, reached on an infield single, then, an inning later, keyed the comeback from a 7-1 deficit with a grand slam.
Jackson later added a solo shot leading off the eighth inning for an insurance run.
“I kind of saw Alby holding his face. My heart kind of dropped,” Jackson said last night. “I was able to see him afterward and see he was doing OK. Knowing he was OK helped. It made me feel a little bit better. I’m just happy he’s doing OK and in good spirits.”
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Chris Graham
