Who says Baseball ISN'T a contact sport?

http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/wireSto...C-RSSFeeds0312

 

Poor guy

 

Wow! Thats crazy

 

Very sad...

 

Man, it's sad when someone gets killed by a freak accident like that...

You worry about cancer, stroke, heart attack, or maybe random violence. No one expects to be killed at a baseball game, by a baseball.

However, those baseballs are no joke...

I had a friend (pitcher) get nailed by a throw from the 3rd baseman, as he was trying to gun down the guy streaking for first base. Paul was standing straight up on the pitchers mound, and when Howard rifled the ball to the first baseman. Guess what was between 3rd & first.. Paul's head.

Paul was about 5'10", 230, muscle-bound. Think Darryl "Moose" Johnston. That softball (and they aren't soft anymore) caught him right above the right eyebrow, tore it almost off, simultaneously dropping Paul like he'd been hit by Mike Tyson, with brass knuckles. It was funny for about 0.5 seconds, then we realized it was serious. We all ran to the pitchers mound. He was out... Paul was the first person I've ever seen unconscious. He was only out for 10-15 seconds, but that 10-15 seconds seemed like 10-15 minutes.

His eyebrow was hanging on by a piece of skin, and he was bleeding pretty profusely. We threw him in somebody's car, took him to the ER and they fixed him up, stitched his eyebrow back and a week later, you'd never know that had happened.

If that ball had hit him a half-inch lower, and a half inch more to the left, he might have been killed too. There's no such thing as a safe sport... Even cheerleaders are beign severely injured, either from falling, or being fallen on.

 

Two kids and another on the way in October, very sad situation.

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah......I see it now.

 

He played for the Omaha Royals last year... I since I play the music there, I played his song when he came to bat, it's still in my list...

 

When Juan Gonzales(z) came to bat, when he played for the Texas Rangers, they play the music that plays when you see Darth Vader enter a room/facility, etc...


Da-da-dada-da-dada-da-dada...

You know you're a bad-*** when the Darth Vader theme plays, when you walk in a building...

 

I play that for the Umps when they enter the field...

 

That's a really sad story.

A baseball to the head can aboslutely be lethal.

When I was a kid about 7 years old, I went to a Tucson Toros game with my dad. We were on the first base side, about 7 rows up, right at first base.

This was about 1969 - 1970, in a small minor league field. There was very little in the way of fencing protecting the fans from fouls. Parks are way better nowadays.

A fan sitting about 15' - 20' away from us got creamed in the side of the head by a screaming line drive foul ball. She was approximately 5th row, just past first base. She was looking out toward center field and never saw it coming. It happened so fast even people sitting right near her were not sure what had happened. They hauled her off in a stretcher ASAP. She was alive but still unconcious when they removed her.

It was pretty traumatic to see that up close. She easily could have been killed. Made you want to move back a few rows after seeing it.

 

Golf ***** are deadly too.

I didn't see this happen, my team had just walked away maybe 45 minutes before we heard the ambulance. But, I was stationed on Camp Red Cloud in Uijongbu, South Korea- and Camp red Cloud is a base that pretty much surrounds a 9-hole golf course. It's nothing to be walking and have a golf ball land in front of you, or behind you while you're walking on the street that surrounds the course.

So, we were doing Sergeant's time training, and in doing this, we had to be in full battle-rattle, Kevlar, LBE, gas mask, and sometimes, the M-16 too, but- not today. I forgot what we were doing, probably CTT or Land Navigation- somethin or other, but- Two teams were together. I took my team, and we moved maybe 200 - 300 meters away from where they were. We heard the ambulance, but coudl not see the other team, or what they were doing.

Maybe an hour after we heard the ambulance, we came back, and were told, "Sarge. We were taking a break and Specialist Johnson walked over there to take a smoke. She took her helmet off and almost as soon as she did, a golf ball hit her in the back of the head, and knocked her out. We ran over to the hospital (about 100 meters away) and got help. They came over, and took her back with them."

I was like, Damn! Talk about bad timing. If she'd kept her helmet on, she'd have just been pissed about a golf ball hitting her helmet, but for taking her helmet off, she could have been killed by a freaking golf ball.

We never knew who hit her. Sergeant's time lasted 4 hours, and after lunch, we saw her again. She was OK.

Weird, the way things can happen. That's be like walking outside, and having a penny sized meteorite pop you in the head. I imagine that woudl penetrate a Kevlar pretty easily too.

 

That is so sad

 

The freaky part is that he wasn't the pitcher. What I mean is usually when someone gets hit by a line drive its the pitcher.

I currently play baseball and I know about oh probably a month ago I was pitching and facing a very good hitter so of course I ramped up and put a little extra on it. Well I never really thought he would hit a line drive right back at me. He did and luckly it was a low line drive so it hit me right in the knee and bounced almost all the way back to the catcher. I dug down deep and continued to play. It hurt like heck for about a week but that was it. Thats really the only time I have been so nervous and shaken up while playing baseball. A pitcher really is so defenseless on the mound after he releases the ball. I tell you what I felt lucky that night that i didn't come out of that game worse off.

 

Back when I used to play softball I played second base and our shortstop was a guy who had been a shortstop in the Royals farm system. Well the batter hit a ball to him and he gunned it to first to get the batter, but instead the ball caught the ump right in the jaw. I have never seen anyone dropped to the ground that fast, guy was out for about 15 minutes. It just about tore his jaw completely off his face and his teeth were all over the field. Very nasty to actually see something like that happen.