© Joe Camporeale | 2019 Jun 22
“You become invisible real fast, I’ve done it several different times.”
In a season full of fresh faces, few have had as large an impact on the San Francisco Giants as Alex Dickerson has, and he’s done it in less than a week with the club. The 29-year old burst back onto the Major League scene this week with a massive performance against the Diamondbacks in his debut for the Giants, launching a grand slam while going 3-for-5 with six RBIs.
While his debut for the team was nearly perfect, his journey to get to this point has been far from it. Dickerson spoke with Larry Krueger on Wednesday morning to discuss his recent success, his long road to the big leagues, and various injuries he has had along the way.
“Every one of ’em has been kind of a fluke injury, especially the bone cyst. That was an interesting one going into the end of spring training, thought I had a shot to possibly make the team as a 23-year old and I step on a sprinkler head,” Dickerson said. “They x-rayed it, say ‘hey, your ankle’s fine, but it’s hollow or your heel is hollow.’ I was like ‘well what do you mean?’ and they’re like: ‘there’s no bone in there.’ It was actually something that probably saved my career and probably quality of life.”
Dickerson has been sidelined with various injuries throughout his career, injuries that restricted his ability to secure a foothold in Major League Baseball, but that never stopped him from continuing to fight and grind to get back to where he felt he belonged.
“I fought hard because I was so close I could taste it, fought hard so I could get back on the field and I did get back when they didn’t expect it. But then I had a collision in ’16 that pushed a disk in my back out a little bit and I struggled with that through ’17 and had to have that operated on,” Dickerson said. “Then when I came back I threw too much too early and my elbow blew out. There’s always something that ended up being so major, it’s never like ‘I pulled a hamstring, I’m out 4-6 weeks.’ So from the public perspective it’s always an always injured guy but from my perspective I’m like: ‘nah I’ve had like three injuries, they just happened to be pretty major and took me off the field for a long time.’
“I always felt like, even though they start piling up in a row, once this one’s done with I’m good to go, I’ll be a baseball player again and I felt like that this year for the most part.”
Alex Dickerson is now on the other side of the injury paradigm, he was called up to the Giants when Steven Duggar went down with injury and has been an absolute revelation for the team that dons the orange and black. He’s hitting .476 with one homer and nine RBIs after Wednesday’s loss to the Colorado Rockies, and it looks like he has finally found himself a home in Major League Baseball.
One thing’s for sure though, Alex Dickerson is not invisible anymore.
Listen to the full interview with Alex Dickerson below. To hear him discuss his road to the San Fransisco Giants and injuries, start from 4:45.