In baseball, a line drive is a type of batted ball, sharply hit, and on (or slightly above) a level trajectory. The threshold between a line drive (also sometimes called a liner or frozen rope) and a fly ball can be subjective.
Line drives can be dangerous to baseball players and spectators. For example, on July 22, 2007, Tulsa Drillers first base coach Mike Coolbaugh was killed in a line drive accident at an away game with the Arkansas Travelers.
On August 18, 2012, Boston Red Sox pitching prospect Brian Johnson (at the time playing for Lowell Spinners) broke multiple orbital bones when he was struck by a line drive in a game at Fenway Park.
Famous quotes containing the words line and/or drive:
“For as the interposition of a rivulet, however small, will occasion the line of the phalanx to fluctuate, so any trifling disagreement will be the cause of seditions; but they will not so soon flow from anything else as from the disagreement between virtue and vice, and next to that between poverty and riches.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
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