Eric Lauer, the 30-year-old left-hander and youngest member of the Toronto Blue Jays’ rotation, showed up on Thursday ahead of a three-game series with the Detroit Tigers sporting a nasty wound.
Lauer’s bottom lip was swollen and deeply bruised. He revealed the injury required six stitches.
But how did it happen? As Lauer tells it, it came as the result of breaking a cardinal rule.
“There’s kind of this, like, known thing not to mess with (Max) Scherzer on his start days, especially when he has his headphones in, and I broke that rule,” Lauer said, via the Toronto Star. “I tried to talk to him a little too early. He wasn’t very happy about that, so six stitches is what you get for that.”
Lauer was so deadpan when blaming the fat lip on Scherzer that members of the media weren’t sure if he was joking or not.
On Friday, before Toronto’s second game against the Tigers, Lauer kept the gag going.
“I want you guys to talk to Max first,” he said with a smile. “I want to hear what Max says.”
Even manager John Schneider learned into the joke.
“I had to separate them,” he said. “If there was an altercation, I didn’t see it. That’s all I can say.”
With concerns about in-fighting bubbling up among the fan base, Lauer addressed relationships and friendships in the clubhouse. However, he wasn’t quite ready to let go of the joke.
“I think the people who were taking that route should more look into how we interact with each other in the dugout,” he said “Even (Thursday), after I came out, we were talking, laughing, having a good time, so even if it was (a fight) it didn’t affect anything relationally.”
What actually happened to Lauer’s lip remains unclear, but it hardly impacted him on the mound. During Toronto’s series-opening victory on Thursday night, he hurled 8.0 innings of one-run ball, striking out six to pick up the win and improve to 6-2 on the season.
