It was a scarier moment of spring training, the sight of Blue Jays reliever T.J. House sprawled face first on the ground, the back of his head bloody after he was hit by a line drive during a game against the Detroit Tigers.

The comebacker came off Tigers first baseman John Hicks’ bat — with one on and one out in the bottom of the ninth — travelling at such a speed that House could only swivel to avoid getting hit in the face. He was tended to on the mound by trainers for at least 10 minutes before being loaded into an ambulance, offering a welcome thumbs up along the way. The game was called early in the wake of the frightening injury.

“I remember getting struck, I was awake the whole time on the mound, talking to the trainers. Got transported to the hospital, stayed the night overnight there and then went through a two-week concussion protocol, cleared all my tests,” House reminisced in St. Petersburg, Fla., earlier this week, about an hour down the road from where the incident occurred at the Tigers’ spring training complex.

If six or seven staples in the back of House’s head to close the wound sounds like he got off lightly, it’s because he did. He escaped significant damage — no fractures — and any minor concussion symptoms that popped up had disappeared within four days. It has not affected him since.

Manager John Gibbons joked about House’s hard head, but admitted it is never a situation you want to see as a manager.

“It’s scary. It could be disastrous. Housy was at the ballpark the next day, I couldn’t believe it,” Gibbons said.

“I couldn’t believe he came out as good as he did, put it that way.”

House made his first start of the season with the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons a month to the day after the injury. While there were few physical symptoms holding him back, returning to the mound did require getting over some mental hurdles.

He turned to teammates J.A. Happ and Francisco Liriano for guidance. Unfortunately, both had experience with getting hit on the noggin while on the mound: Happ suffered a skull fracture after getting decked in Tampa in 2013, while Liriano was diagnosed with a mild concussion after getting hit during the 2016 American League Division Series versus the Texas Rangers.

“Getting used to the ball coming off the bat again was very difficult because you’re reaction is automatically to twitch,” House said. “It’s just your body, it’s not something that you mean to do, it’s just a self-defence thing, that’s how it was explained to me.”

“You eventually become more comfortable and you have to put in your head that, ‘Hey, I’ve been playing nine years. It happened one time on one pitch.’ You just have to know that it’s a freak thing and you believe that it’s not going to happen again.”

The couple of comebackers House has dealt with since are admittedly not fun for the left-hander, but as long as they’re not coming near his head, he’s happy.

He didn’t deal with anything of the sort in his first inning of work with the Blue Jays this week, called up after he was scratched from a schedule start with the Bisons last Friday, about an hour before game time.

It was the first time the 27-year-old left-hander, who was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in 2008 and debuted in 2014, has been on a big league mound since July 2016. To return, he said, was wonderful.

“You don’t realize how much you miss it until you actually get back here. (Tuesday night) was just fun,” said House, who has pitched 130 2/3 innings in Buffalo this year.

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The transition from starter, his role with the Bisons, to the bullpen for the Blue Jays is familiar to House. After tearing his rotator cuff in 2015 — an injury that also occurred against the Tigers and required 11 months of rehab — he was moved to the bullpen with Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate, the Columbus Clippers. All four of his big-league appearances last season came in relief.

House hopes he will still be with the Blue Jays by the time they take on the Tigers in early September, giving him the chance to end an injury-ridden history against the club.

“Detroit’s my kryptonite, I guess.”