Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
Mac Williamson, no longer with the Giants, will now legally oppose the Giants.
The former outfielder alleges that the 2018 concussion that arose from his tripping over an on-field bullpen mound and hitting his head on the left-field-line wall at Oracle Park, as well as the ensuing complications, has “ended my career.”
Williamson is suing the China Basin Ballpark Company LLC, the owner and operator of Oracle Park, which is controlled by the Giants’ ownership group.
“My life hasn’t been the same since suffering the injury,” Williamson said in a Tuesday release through a public relations firm for his attorney, Randy Erlewine. “The concussion ended my career and left me with life-long injuries that have also taken a significant toll on my personal life. I’m fortunate to have such an understanding fiancé who has been there every step of the way and helps me get through the days I suffer nausea, trouble sleeping, mood swings, and other issues. I wake up every day hoping that today is a better day and that I will get closer to how I felt before the injury.”
Those better days, according to Williamson, have not come since the April 24, 2018, incident. He said he has continued to feel the effects during a career that saw him get designated off the Giants’ roster in 2019 before stints in Seattle and in South Korea.
“The concussion caused a steep decline in Plaintiff’s performance level,” alleges the lawsuit, which was filed in Superior Court in San Francisco.
The suit claims that late Giants managing general partner Peter Magowan apologized to Williamson for the injury six weeks later and said the bullpens were placed on the field in 2000 against the wishes of then-commissioner Bud Selig. The mounds were moved off the field and beyond the outfield walls for the 2020 campaign, but not before San Francisco’s Steven Duggar, San Diego’s Wil Myers and the Dodgers’ Chris Taylor fell over the same mounds in ’19. Oracle Park was one of three MLB parks to have bullpen mounds on the playing field at the time.
“Everybody’s career ends at some point, but to have it taken from me because the baseball mounds were unnecessarily placed on the field was hard to cope with,” the 30-year-old Williamson said in a Zoom news conference in which he and his legal team did not take questions.
The Giants, in a statement, suggested there were other avenues for Williamson to pursue rather than taking the organization to court.
“MLB and its clubs have a long-standing practice of addressing claims arising from player injuries through the collectively-bargained grievance process and the workers’ compensation system,” the statement read. “Williamson’s claims are properly resolved through the grievance or workers’ compensation process, not through the courts.”
Williamson was a third-round draft pick of the Giants in 2012 out of Wake Forest and made his MLB debut in late 2015. After an offseason swing change, Williamson tore up Triple-A Sacramento competition for 11 games to start his ’18 season before getting called up, the suit alleging he was “one of the best power hitters” in baseball. The injury came in his fifth game of the season with the big-league Giants.
The release refers to Williamson as an unsigned free agent, though he says in the Zoom his “life in baseball has effectively come to an end.”