"I was like, 'What are you doing? I'm fine,'" Poncedeleon recalled in a recent conversation with MLB.com. "I thought I was going to have to pass concussion protocol and maybe be out a week or two. It was once I got into the ambulance, that's when it started hitting me that something might be wrong."
It's been nearly eight months since Poncedeleon took an impact that nearly took his life. The scars and small dent that remains in his head serve as a permanent reminder.
The details of what happened during Poncedeleon's early hours in the hospital have since been relayed back to him. His father flew in from California. His girlfriend, along with their son and her parents, rushed north from Florida while Poncedeleon went in for emergency brain surgery.
He next remembers waking up with a headache, and, later, grasping the gravity of why. In those early days of Poncedeleon's recovery, the doctors didn't speak much about baseball. They were focused on much simpler things. Could he move his hands? What about his feet?