Joyner Watches Game in His Hospital Room--Bacterial Infection

Wally Joyner’s lower right shin is swollen and red, and his doctor says it almost looks as if Joyner burned himself. What happened? For sure, there was no spider bite. Instead, doctors say Joyner got an abrasion recently, and when he kept pounding foul balls off his shin, when he kept taking off his sweaty socks, the abrasion became infected.

Joyner spent Saturday night in a tiny room at Orange County’s St. Joseph Hospital, and he watched Game 4 of the Angel-Red Sox playoff series on a 19-inch television screen. He didn’t move around much. His leg was elevated, and his wife sat with him to elevate his spirits.

As of Saturday night, he was listed as doubtful for Game 5 today.

“It’s a localized bacterial infection of the skin, which is properly called cellulitis,” said Dr. Ron Cotliar, who serves as the Angels’ dermatologist. “But we’ll try to get him out of the hospital tomorrow (Sunday). That’s our goal. There’s a good chance he’ll miss only two games (and be back for Game 6 in Boston on Tuesday).”

Joyner, the Angels’ rookie first baseman, wouldn’t do any interviews. His room was closed shut, and a sign on the door read: “No Visitors . . . Family Only!!”

He was told that a reporter had come to visit, and this was his response to hospital spokesman Valerie Orleans:

“I’m not up to talking to anybody. I’m just not up to it. I appreciate (reporters) stopping by, but I don’t want to talk. Maybe tomorrow, not today.”

This is all so mysterious. Joyner first felt the pain in his shin last Wednesday in Boston. He thought it was just a bruise, but he went to the videotape and saw that he never banged his shin at all. Then Thursday night, his temperature rose to the low 100s. Team trainers saw him the next morning, heard about his fever and decided he’d been bitten by a spider.

“I guess I’m allergic to spiders,” Joyner had said.

But his shin still was tender before Friday night’s game. He tried running in the outfield, did so without a limp, and decided he’d play. In the fourth inning, he was sore again, but he figured he’d banged the shin when he tried to score on the controversial out at the plate that led to the ejection of Manager Gene Mauch.

Afterward, in the interview room, he kept squinting and rubbing his eyes. He still had a fever. He had the chills. He was given an antibiotic.

He woke up Saturday morning, and his fever was exactly 100 degrees. He tried doing some errands around the house, but limped badly. He came to the stadium, complained about the pain, and Cotliar was called in to see him. There was some talk about giving him a stronger antibiotic, so maybe he could play.

But Mauch, General Manager Mike Port, club physician Dr. Jules Rasinski and Cotliar all decided to send him to the hospital.

He left on crutches, according to Mauch.

“He’s getting antibiotics intravenously,” Cotliar said. “By doing that, we know we’re getting to it (the infection) quickly. See, we sent him to the hospital because we wanted to get it under control quickly and get it cleared up. I’ll check tonight and tomorrow morning and see how he feels. Healthy people respond quickly to this. Realistically, I don’t think he’ll play tomorrow (Sunday), but we’ll try to get him well.

“How this all happened? I think that’s a question I can’t answer. It just happened. You go to sleep at night and don’t have a cold and then it’s there in the morning. His abrasion got there somehow, and then it got infected. It could’ve happened three weeks from now. It just happened now. It was the friction from the socks, the sweating. Maybe the foul balls. But it all came together at one time, and it happened.

“It was no insect bite. Most people see a bump and say, ‘Oh, I’ve got an insect bite.’ It’s not a bite. . . . If it had been a bad spider bite, I wouldn’t be as optimistic as I am now, because you lose tissue with an insect bite. He’s had no tissue loss.”