NEW YORK -- Dustin Fowler's Major League debut ended in cruelly abrupt fashion last June 29, as the outfielder -- then playing for the Yankees -- violently slammed into a wall down the right-field line at Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago, sustaining an open rupture of the patellar tendon in his right knee.
One half-inning before he was to bat, Fowler was instead carted off the field, requiring immediate season-ending surgery. At the time, Brett Gardner said that it was "one of the worst things I've seen on a baseball field." Sent to the Athletics in the July 31 deal that brought Sonny Gray to New York, Fowler will finally get a chance to play at Yankee Stadium on Friday when the A's arrive for a three-game series.