It was a scary night in Major League Baseball, as Giancarlo Stanton and Chase Headley both took fastballs to their heads on Thursday.
Stanton - the Miami Marlins' young superstar - was hit by an 88-mile per hour fastball to his jaw, as the Marlins played the Brewers in Milwaukee. ( Video of Stanton getting hit by the pitch, thrown by Dan Fiers, is here.) Stanton was visibly bleeding before being taken off the field by a stretcher.
Just minutes later and almost 1,000 miles away, Chase Headley of the New York Yankees was hit in the chin by a 96-mile per hour pitch thrown by Tampa Bay Rays closer Jake McGee. ( Video of Headley getting hit is here.) Headley appeared dazed but responsive and, unlike Stanton, able to walk under his own power.
Stanton and Headley's injuries put a spotlight, again, on how dangerous - and sometimes career-changing - the duel between baseball's pitchers and hitters can be.
And there's been a lot of recent focus on defenseless pitchers like Alex Cobb and J.A. Happ getting hit and injured.
But it's a relatively rare scenario: Across all of Major League Baseball, about two-to-three pitchers per year end up taking a line drive to their head during a season. For every 300,000 pitches thrown, about one pitcher is hit by a line drive back to his head.
The greater risk, instead, is to baseball's hitters. By nature of the game - with pitchers targeting the batter's box, versus a hitter randomly spraying line drives all over the field - batters like Stanton or Headley are far more likely to get hit by a pitch.
On average, at least one batter is hit per game, although most aren't hits to the head.
It's worth noting that the only Major League Baseball player to die from an injury on the field was Ray Chapman - a batter, not a pitcher, who was hit in the head. And several other players, most famously young slugger Tony Conigliaro of the Boston Red Sox, were never the same after being similarly injured; Conigliaro lost vision in his eye.
That risk is why batters wear helmets, and other padding, to protect them when they're at the plate. And sometimes that gear is sufficient to spare them injury.
But on other nights - like on Thursday, with Stanton gushing blood - it doesn't seem like quite enough.
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, September 11, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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