SCOTTSDALE, ariz. — David Dahl admits he was scared.
He should have been. He didn't know it at the time, but he was bleeding on the inside, his spleen lacerated during a violent collision in shallow center field last May.
As the ambulance took him from New Britain Stadium to a hospital in nearby Hartford, Conn. he was in severe pain, made all the worse as he began to worry about the possible demise of his big-league dreams.
"It was a sharp, shooting pain in my side. I couldn't stand up, it was hard to breath and I wanted to throw up," Dahl recalled Thursday before the Rockies' Cactus League game against Arizona.