Texas Rangers 3B Josh Jung finds solace in Kobe Bryant’s words as road to recovery begins (2024)

ARLINGTON — In the wake of yet another injury and yet another surgery, Texas Rangers third baseman Josh Jung couldn’t come up with words to describe exactly what he felt.

So he used Kobe Bryant’s.

Jung, a voracious reader and keen on the psychology of challenges in sports, remembered that in the wake of a potentially career-ending Achilles tendon injury, the late Bryant took to Facebook to express all of his feelings. All of them.

And after rereading Bryant’s 2013 post, Jung figured he couldn’t say it much better. So fresh off surgery to attach a plate and seven screws to mend the fractured ulna bone in his right wrist that left him in cast from his hand to his shoulder, Jung tapped into the post because it summed up both Bryant’s frustration and his determination.

“This is such BS,” Jung said Friday, examining Bryant’s original post from his phone and tweaking it to his own situation. “All the training and sacrifice just flew out the window with one pitch, a pitch I’ve seen a million times. The frustration is unbearable. The anger is rage.”

Save for the sport, it was the same as Bryant’s late-night post a decade ago. Jung had prepared the statement because he was concerned he’d get too emotional describing his feelings in a question-and-answer session.

He still got emotional. And started to spin the statement into his own.

“The words are few and far in between,” he said. “Why did this happen to me again? It just makes no damn sense. Now, I’m supposed to come back from my fourth surgery in four years and be better than I was. Again. Do I have the constant willpower to overcome all of these things? What lessons do I still need to learn? Maybe this is the breaking point. Maybe this is the point of no return.

“Or maybe this is the story I’ll be able to tell standing at the top of the mountain. Real perspective sinks in when you can get all your emotions finally out. There are far greater issues and challenges in the world than a broken ulna bone. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, find the silver lining and get to work with the same belief, the same drive and the same conviction. One day it will be the end of the road. But that day is not today. Today, you will rise up. You will stand up again. The test of a man is that when he is knocked down seven times, he stands up. No matter what you go through, you will endure it and you will conquer it and you will come back better than ever. I will believe it and I will live it. It’s just another obstacle standing in your way to the path of achieving greatness.”

Jung suffered the broken wrist in Monday’s game after a pitch he swung at and missed hit him on the wrist. He said the hand immediately went numb. X-rays revealed a fracture that required a more extensive repair on Tuesday than had been initially expected. He is expected to miss 8-10 weeks while recovering.

The injury came after Jung missed almost all of spring training while recovering from a calf muscle injury. Last year, he missed seven weeks toward the end of the season with a fractured thumb. He’s dealt with a stress fracture in his foot and a torn labrum as well since 2021.

The latest injury left him searching for answers. Bryant’s statement hit home.

“I don’t show my frustration or my emotions or feelings very often,” he said after he concluded the statement. “This one just hurts worse. It just sucks that I have to do [a comeback] again. But I know how to do it. That’s all it comes down to truly. I think there are a lot of different silver linings. You just have to find one that resonates the most and stick with it.”

In Bryant’s words, Jung found something that resonated.

Twitter: @Evan_P_Grant

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