Dangers
To date, one Major League player has died as a result of being struck by a pitch: Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians was hit in the head by Carl Mays on August 16, 1920, and died the next morning.
It is possible, however, to suffer serious injuries as a result of being hit by a pitch, even when wearing a helmet. On August 18, 1967, Red Sox batter Tony Conigliaro was hit almost directly in the left eye by a fastball thrown by Jack Hamilton of the California Angels. His cheekbone was shattered, he nearly lost the sight of the eye, was unable to play for over a year, and never regained his earlier batting ability. (Batting helmets at that time were not required to have an "ear flap"; indeed, it was not until 2002 that all major league batters were required to wear helmets with side protection.) On September 28, 1995, Kirby Puckett, of the Minnesota Twins, was struck in the cheek by a Dennis Martínez fastball, breaking his jaw and loosening two teeth. It would be his last game; during spring training the following year he developed glaucoma, which ended his career. Most recently, Mike Piazza, then of the New York Mets, was hit in the head by a pitch from Julián Tavárez of the St. Louis Cardinals on September 10, 2005. His helmet shattered, and he suffered a concussion. Other relatively minor injuries that are possible include broken fingers or hands, broken feet, broken ribs, injuries to the knee, or groin injuries.
Read more about this topic: Hit By Pitch
Famous quotes containing the word dangers:
“The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“Anyone with a real taste for solitude who indulges that taste encounters the dangers of any other drug-taker. The habit grows. You become an addict.... Absorbed in the visions of solitude, human beings are only interruptions. What voice can equal the voices of solitude? What sights equal the movement of a single day’s tide of light across the floor boards of one room? What drama be as continuously absorbing as the interior one?”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)