MLB star goes on DL for hand, foot and mouth disease
Any parent of young kids knows what a nuisance Coxsackievirus, known to scientists as human enterovirus A16, can be. it causes the common childhood affliction known as “hand, foot and mouth disease.”
When that tiny — even by virus standards — strand of RNA gets into a kid’s body, it brings with it a fever and painful blisters on the hands, feet, and around the mouth, giving the disease its name.
The whole thing is a common childhood affliction. It goes away on its own after a week and, like most other viruses, leaves behind it a mug shot that the immune system can identify and arrest later, effectively acting as its own vaccine.
All of the above is not in any real way unusual, especially to anyone who’s got kids and watched the little ones suffer through it before the age of five.
What is unusual is when a Major League Baseball player contracts the bug, gets symptoms and ends up having to miss at least one scheduled start.
That’s what happened to the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard over the weekend, as the Mets announced Sunday that Syndergaard is headed to the 10-day disabled list with HFMD.
“Sounds like once the blisters and everything — or whatever he’s got going on on his hands — clears up, he’s going to be fine,” Mets manager Mickey Callaway said.
The Mets did luck into one bit of good fortune as their Sunday night game against the Yankees was rained out. So rather than have to recall Corey Oswalt from Las Vegas to pitch in Syndergaard’s stead, they instead get to back their rotation up and use major leaguers for the next couple of games, one of which Syndergaard was likely to have started.
The veteran pitcher knew something was up during his start Friday against the Yankees.
Syndergaard, who normally sends a pun-very-much-intended blistering fastball over the plate at upwards of 100 miles per hour, hit just 97.7 on the radar gun in the first inning.
By the fifth, he’d lost all movement on the pitch and the velocity had dropped to 95.
And his sinker, which has just as much mustard on it coming out of his hand, started at 98.1 but couldn’t crack 94 on a consistent basis later in the game.
“During the game, he didn’t quite figure it out. He knew he had trouble breathing,” Callaway said. “I put my hands on his legs to talk to him when he came out and said, ‘Hey, man. Is everything OK?’ And I felt his leg shaking. So he was just weak and run-down, and I think the virus just took its toll.”
As Syndergaard came out of the game, he noticed “splotches and blisters” on his hands. Considering that he was shedding virus all over the ball, one can only hope that the rest of his teammates, who handled the ball on defense, have strong immune systems or had the virus when they were little kids. Otherwise, the Mets are going to have a full-fledged plague on their hands for a few weeks.
The Mets did win the game 7-5.
Callaway believes the infection happened to his pitcher when Syndergaard hosted a baseball camp for kids the day before his scheduled start. Coxsackievirus doesn’t tend to like to hang around asymptomatically getting all incubated and comfortable. Instead, the virus prefers blitzkrieg as its tactic of choice and the interval from infection to symptoms is usually less than 48 hours.
“We sent him home right away when we figured out what it was,” Callaway said. “Nobody’s shown any symptoms yet. We’re trying to make sure they wash their hands and do all that a couple days ago. Some people didn’t come into contact with him that day.”
Considering that the disease rarely infects anyone older than about age five, and the disease has a bit of a funny name that almost brings to mind the hoof-and-mouth disease that infects livestock, sometimes the best reaction to your team’s snakebitten season taking another weird injury twist is to laugh.
“We did that a little bit like, ‘Hand, foot and mouth?'” Callaway said. “But yeah, it’s kind of odd. Maybe the first DL stint in Major League Baseball with hand, foot and mouth? Maybe a record or something.”
The moral of the story? Always wash your hands … as anyone who’s got kids knows.
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