It’s a Season of Living Dangerously

This is the baseball season that I have feared for years.

This is the season innocent people are being hurt . . . by the ball.

Baseball is a game--unlike football, basketball and tennis--with ball-related injuries. A baseball is a very dangerous thing. It is dangerous not only to batters, who, as an occupational hazard, continually get hit by pitched balls, but also to fielders, coaches and fans who can suffer serious injury at any second.

A series of line-drive-by accidents began recently with Glenn Davis of the Baltimore Orioles being struck by a batted ball, not while on the playing field, but while waiting to occupy the on-deck circle.

Soon thereafter, Dodger first base coach Ben Hines could not get out of the way of a sharp liner off Brett Butler’s bat that caught him flush on the left arm. Hines ruggedly attempted to wave off any attempt at medical attention until a Dodger trainer noticed that the arm Hines was waving had blood streaming down it.

Last weekend was worse.

In a game Saturday, pitcher Bob Welch of the Oakland Athletics was taken to a Kansas City hospital after a line drive by the Royals’ George Brett struck him on the right wrist, his pitching wrist.

Next night, rookie pitcher Brad Holman of the Seattle Mariners was pitching to Texas’ Mario Diaz when a drive off Diaz’s bat came screaming back at him, 60 1/2 feet away. Holman could not get his glove up in time. He was struck on the forehead and fell in a heap.

The ball bounced all the way into the Ranger dugout.

This terrifying scene has been replayed on television for the last 48 hours. It was a terrible reminder of something that happened many years ago to pitcher Herb Score, whose career was adversely affected, but who luckily did not lose his life.

Had that baseball been traveling on a trajectory two or three inches lower when Holman was struck, the worst was possible. As it was, he did suffer a fractured sinus cavity.

Then, Monday morning, first base coach Jose Cardenal of the Cincinnati Reds was distracted during infield practice and didn’t see a thrown ball flying toward his head. He was carried off on a stretcher and hospitalized.

This has been a particularly eerie season for the boys of summer.

Beginning in spring with the gruesome deaths of two young players in a boating accident, this baseball season also has given us Jose Canseco sustaining a career-threatening injury by volunteering to pitch, Dwight Gooden being hit by a golf club swung indoors by a teammate, Nolan Ryan harmed in a water-skiing mishap, Chris Bosio injured in a brawl, Jody Reed disabled by an opponent’s cheap-shot slide and several players who hurt themselves during fits of temper, generally by punching or kicking an inanimate object.

Such things are a part of baseball, though. Freak accidents and foolish stunts happen every season.

But I don’t remember any season with quite this many incidents involving the actual ball. Batters get hit all the time, and sometimes they punch the people who throw it--or get punched by them. Fielders, coaches and fans, however, had better start being more attentive, because the baseballs are flying.

As a kid, I was playing third base when a boy named Leonard Bonifield came to the plate. He stroked a line drive directly toward me. I took my eye off it. It nearly took my eye.

Next thing I knew, there was blood all over my shirt and my palm as I pressed it against my face. I was horizontal and did not remember getting that way. The doctor at the clinic was very skillful and told me I would have to wear an adhesive eye patch for only a couple of months.

I never forgot that. And to this day, I have always been fearful that someone in the stands at a baseball game is going to be seriously injured by doing exactly what I did--taking his or her eye off the ball.

Players and coaches get paid to take such chances. You don’t.

After the ball struck the coach, Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully repeated his years-old call for coaches and on-deck batters to stop taking risks and start wearing helmets. I don’t know if any of those grizzled coaches would feel like a sissy having to wear a protective helmet, but construction workers do it all the time and nobody calls them sissies.

I do know the families of these coaches would not like to see them be struck in the cap with a batted ball.

Better safe than out.