“I feel sick to my stomach. I haven’t slept much. It doesn’t really feel real, to be honest,” Anthony, back in the bowels of Yankee Stadium, said before Game 2. “It’s brutal. It’s confusing. There’s a lot of different emotions going on. It’s tough to put into words.
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“I feel like I grinded all year … to get to where I am right now and to get to play in a game [Tuesday] night. And for that to happen, it’s confusing. It sucks.”
What specifically is confusing?
“It’s confusing that I’m sitting here having to talk about this, and this has happened [again] and the time that it’s happened,” he said. “That’s what’s confusing. It’s been a confusing year. I’ve dealt with more injuries now than I ever imagined for the course of my entire career.
“So, it’s confusing. I did everything I could every single day to get ready, and especially since I’ve been back with his injury in particular and knowing what I’ve been dealing with, and I’ve been on top of this to make sure that this doesn’t happen. And here we are.”
The Red Sox activated infielder Curtis Mead, who missed more than two months with a fractured left wrist, to take Anthony’s roster spot.
Anthony initially got hurt on May 4, when he partially tore a ligament in his right ring finger, impacting his hand and wrist.
After a stop-and-start recovery process — including consistent discomfort when he tried to swing, causing the Red Sox to limit his hitting activity for months — he finally started playing in minor league games again in mid-August. He returned to the majors on Aug. 30.
“As far as I know, the rehab, the return to play, was the appropriate one,” chief baseball officer Craig Breslow said.
Since getting back on the field, Anthony’s hand was “never really fully 100 percent,” he said. But he could deal with it.
“Throughout the course of the last six weeks, I took some things that were uncomfortable, swings that I didn’t want to take, but I was able to recover,” he said. “[Tuesday] night was just a little bit different … I knew when I grabbed the bat, the way that it felt differently than it has over the last six weeks — that was my call to talk to any staff and tell them that it’s time to go get a look again.”
Anthony led off as the designated hitter in Game 1 against righthander Cam Schlittler. His problem worsened in the first inning, particularly on a check-swing third strike to end his first at-bat.
“The kind of alarm in my head went off,” Anthony said. “Basically committed to myself that I was going to take another at bat and see how it goes.”
In it, he struck out again, on another check swing.
“I knew right then and there, it was time to get it looked at and put somebody else in the game with a better chance,” he said.
The Red Sox got him a car service to Boston, where he arrived at 3 a.m. The purpose, per Anthony: to meet with “the guys who have seen my hand the most,” team doctors, as opposed to merely getting an MRI in New York.
“My thoughts are kind of all over the place,” Anthony said of the long, late travel. “You work all this year to put yourself in a position to just be good enough to go in the playoffs. And for this to happen, it just doesn’t feel real.”
Anthony doesn’t know if he will need surgery. He also noted that amid a harried summer comeback bid, actual rest was minimal.
“Given the point where we were at this year, and all the different things that I tried, and the different shots that I took, and the routes that I went, I think never really rested a ton, right?” he said. “So I don’t necessarily know the answer to that [surgery question].”
Breslow said: “We’re still trying to figure out exactly what happened and what the prognosis will be. It’s still so recent that we’re collecting information, and I’m sure we’ll examine all of those things.”
Anthony returned to Yankee Stadium to be with the team.
“There’s so many different emotions and feelings throughout the course of this rehab process this year that to kind of get to this same news again — and even worse — it’s just like, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to have an answer to anything right now.”
Tim Healey can be reached at timothy.healey@globe.com. Follow him @timbhealey.
