You would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t remember that collision. We’re talking about the one that brought a halt to Buster Posey’s sophomore campaign, the promising follow-up to his Rookie of the Year season in 2010, when the Giants secured the first of three championships in five years.
Posey was crushed at home plate by Scott Cousins, a Marlins outfielder who is remembered mostly for that collision, which came in his first season in the majors. He played just 135 games over four seasons in MLB.
That contact ended Posey’s age 24 season, a year in which the Giants, at 86-76, missed the playoffs four games back of the St. Louis Cardinals for a wild-card berth.
The injury resulted in a fractured fibula and torn ligaments in Posey’s ankle, but he returned the following season to make his first All-Star team.
The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly asked Posey about the incident in a recent Q&A session with the now-shareholder of the Giants.
On this topic, Baggs asked Posey if he’d be open to talking to Cousins and what he’d say. At the time, Cousins defended the decision, but was also reportedly “in tears” at the thought that he ended Posey’s season.
Posey admitted he would be open to a discussion:
Yeah, 100 percent. I most definitely would be open to a dialogue with him. It was one of those things. In the moment, I didn’t want to talk right away. There was a lot of frustration on my part. But I’d most definitely have a conversation with him.
What would he say?
Well, I’d have to talk to him first. Figure out what he’s been doing the last 10 or 11 years, how he processed that play. I don’t know. I’ve never talked to him. But … I hope he’s not carrying a burden. That’s what I would tell him. And if I could help him in some way to not carry that burden, that’s what I would want to say to him.
While that play, and the resulting injury is often remembered as creating the rule that prevented players from running over catchers — and it did have an effect — the rule wasn’t changed until Alex Avila, son of then-Tigers general manager Al Avila, was crunched by David Ross in the playoffs, suffering a strained patellar tendon in his left knee.
Baggarly mentions that fact to Posey in the interview, which can be found, in its entirety, here.