Last summer, while playing for Tennessee Mojo 2021, Auburn signee Abbey Smith scored on a play but in the process of sliding across the plate landed on top to the softball.
Yea, it was as bad as it sounded… if not worse for the speedy outfield who was ranked in the Top 40 of the 2021 Extra Elite 100and also an elite track competitor.
In video taken of the slide, you can see she immediately jumps up in pain and limps towards the dugout.
Abbey immediately knew the play at the plate would leave a mark.
“I figured there was going to be a bruise,” she explains, “because I bruise easily as it is. However, I thought it would be a normal bruise and didn’t know it would turn basically black.”
The innocuous slide caused a huge contusion on her left leg and during the ensuing weeks Abbey documented her bruising with photos and video. She got the idea to share the experience on TikTok in a nicely assembled video under the theme “for people who say softballs are ‘soft’ and don’t hurt.”
Sometime during the next couple of weeks, she documented her bruising & created a TikTok video about Softballs not being soft. She posted it on TikTok and thought maybe a few people would enjoy the irony of her statement.
A “few people” has, however, become 2.7 million views, almost 775k likes and over 15 thousand comments!
“When I first posted the TikTok,, “Abbey admits. “I didn’t think it would blow up. When it got over 100K likes, I was in such shock. Then I just kept checking it and kept seeing the numbers go up.”
Today, Abbey—who has persevered through shoulder surgery and is back playing high school ball for her James Bowie High team in Austin, Texas—seems no worse for the wear as she went 7-for-7 with two walks, six runs schooled and a crazy 2.428 OPS in two games last week. For the year she’s hitting .667 with a .691 on-base percentage and is 17-for-17 in steals.
Still, she says although she still has her fantastic track speed, she has a souvenir from the slide.
“The bruise didn’t go away for about two months or possibly more,” she recalls of the painful injury from about nine months ago. “I didn’t let the bruise limit me but it definitely hurt when I slid for a while after. Also, the swelling and a knot under the bruise, is still here to this day.”
Here is the TikTok video…
@absmith20 yes i landed on the ball