Cody Bellinger Celebrated His Game-Winning Homer So Hard He Dislocated His Shoulder
“It kinda hurt”
Cody Bellinger’s right shoulder has a tendency to pop in and out of its socket. It happened once in 2018 and then again last season when he dived to try to stop a grounder while playing first base. In both instances, Bellinger didn’t need to go on the injured list and missed only minimal time, though the 2019 incident did spell the end of his time as a first baseman.
It happened again in Sunday night’s Game 7 between the Dodgers and Braves, but not while trying to make a spectacular defensive play. Bellinger dislocated the bothersome shoulder while celebrating a home run.
Bellinger stroked an enormous homer in the bottom of the seventh to break a 3–3 tie and was greeted near the dugout by his jubilant teammates, who delivered ferocious forearm smashes to Bellinger. After Kiké Hernández leapt to bang ulnas and radiuses with Bellinger, though, something was clearly up with Cody’s shoulder. He did a little spin move to avoid Joc Pederson’s leaping celebration and made his way straight to the dugout.
In the top of the next inning, Fox’s cameras showed a closeup of Bellinger making a beeline for the clubhouse with a grimace on his face and then appearing to tell rightfielder Mookie Betts as they took the field for defense that his shoulder had popped out.
After the game, Bellinger confirmed that the shoulder had come dislodged.
“I hit Kiké’s shoulder a little too hard and my shoulder popped out, so I had to go back in the training room,” Bellinger said on MLB Network. “They popped it back in and I was ready to play some defense. It kinda hurt.
“I’m going to maybe use my left arm [in the future]. I’ve never dislocated that one.”
Luckily for the Dodgers, Bellinger was fine, so his teammates can joke about it.
“You can take a positive out of everything and the positive here is that Belli now knows that he can’t mess with people that are way stronger than him,” Hernández told Fox’s Ken Rosenthal.
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