Yankees' Juan Soto Homered Just Two Pitches After Dramatic Injury Scare

Soto belted a go-ahead home run just two pitches after fouling a ball off of his foot.

Juan Soto watches a two-run home run fly during the bottom of the sixth inning of Wednesday's 4-3 win over the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium. / Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Juan Soto on Wednesday night made New York Yankees fans hold their breath before he took their breath away.

Soto belted a two-run, go-ahead home run in the bottom of the sixth inning to help power the New York Yankees to a 4-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday. That blew Yankees fans away.

What made them hold their breath was that Soto, in a dramatic injury scare, fouled a ball off of his right foot and proceeded to hobble down the first-base line in pain before falling to his knees.

But the Yankees slugger dug back into the batter's box moments later and drilled a 79-MPH knucklecurve into the right-field seats, hopping on one foot as he watched it fly before jogging around the bases.

After the game, Soto admitted he was in a lot of pain before slugging the long ball.

"It was a lot of pain," Soto said. "At the end of the day, I tried to focus on the at-bat. Sometimes when you hit yourself like that, you kind of go away a little bit from the at-bat. So I tried to just focus, take my time, go in there and make good contact."

How long did it take Soto to realize he was fine and could continue the at-bat?

"A couple minutes," Soto said. "When I hit it, I knew there wasn't anything broke right when I hit it, but it was really painful and I tired to put weight on my foot but i just fell down."

Soto's teammate Jazz Chisholm Jr., who delivered a walk-off hit in the 11th inning, told reporters that he and his teammates could tell that the slugger was about to "do something special" right before his sixht-inning homer.

"The way he was looking around, you could see in his eyes, he was about to do something special," Chisholm said.

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