Home MLB Right on the nose

Right on the nose

by Matt Smith

Getting hit in the face by an Albert Pujols line drive doesn’t sound like much fun.  It certainly didn’t look like much fun last night, so I’ll resist the temptation to link to any photos of the Padres’ Chris Young.

Thankfully, it is being reported that Young has only suffered a “nasal fracture and a lacerated nose”.  It’s not being overly dramatic to say that he could have been killed.  Only last July, the baseball family had to come to terms with the death of Rockies minor league coach Mike Coolbaugh, who was struck by a line drive while standing in the first base coach’s box.  Coolbaugh would have been further away from the batter than Young was, but tragically he was hit on the neck and the blow proved to be fatal.

Young probably doesn’t feel very lucky right now, but he was.

Coolbaugh’s death prompted MLB to introduce a new rule for the 2008 season that compels coaches to wear protective helmets when they are on the field.  This hasn’t gone down well with some, not least the Dodgers’ third base coach Larry Bowa, and there is an argument that a helmet wouldn’t have saved Coolbaugh.  That’s not really the point though.  His death highlighted just how vulnerable coaches are and added protection, so long as it doesn’t impede the coach from doing his job as normal, has got to be a good thing.

But what about pitchers?  They are even more vulnerable than the coaches because they are so close to the batter at the end of their delivery (approximately 55 feet).  Frankly, it is something of a miracle that pitchers don’t get injured more often due to a come-backer.  Just last Sunday, I was watching Johan Santana facing the Yankees on MLB.tv. In the bottom of the fourth inning, Jason Giambi smashed a line drive straight at Santana that, in the words of announcer Michael Kay, “almost took his head off”.  The Mets’ ace is known for his athleticism and he showed stunning reflexes to duck down and snare the shot right in his glove.  Former pitchers Al Leiter and David Cone were also in the commentary booth and they both used the word “scary” to describe what they saw.  It went down in the playbook as a simple out, but it was only through some skill and a large helping of luck that it wasn’t far more serious.

The problem with providing pitchers with extra protection is that you would need to  devise ways you could do so without inhibiting their pitching deliveries.   That seems very unlikely.    Pitchers wearing the tools of ignorance is not a look that is going to catch on, that’s for sure.  We just have to be thankful that incidents like we saw last night in San Diego are rare.  And that Young took it right on the hooter rather than a more potentially life-threatening spot.

You may also like

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.