Girly Boy

I thought it started with a guy named Poo-Holes.

The rant on that link is idiotic. He's a young kid, maybe was distracted or freaked out (you ever catch a line drive home run in the outfield bleachers? They get up on you very quickly, and are moving very fast), took a hard shot, and the player made a nice gesture in giving the kid a souveneir.

Having sat next to my stepson at a Mariners game where he took a foul ball line drive right to the mouth, lost 5 or 6 teeth (not to mention a lot of blood), just in the moment he and about 30,000 other fans were watching a replay on the big screen, getting hit by something that hard moving that quickly is no small matter.

Anyone who thinks it is should go to a batting cage and take fastballs to the chest in the 90 mph cage.

Kid took a wicked shot, the player made a nice gesture. I don't even like kids, and I think that ragging on the kid in this situation is a **** thing to do.

I heard the kid was an illegal...

BTW, just coincidentally, this article popped up today on a Seattle-area news station's website.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A 3-year-old girl whose skull was fractured by a line drive during batting practice at Dodger Stadium was scheduled for surgery Tuesday.

The girl's injury Monday is not believed to be life-threatening but it was not clear if she would have any long-term disabilities, said Dodgers spokesman Joe Jareck.

The accident occurred when Dodgers catcher Russell Martin hit a line drive in the stands near third base, hitting the girl and knocking her unconscious, Jareck said. The girl was sitting with her father, who rushed her to the first-aid station. The fire department transported her to Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Jareck said batting practice continued, but Martin was upset by the incident and has offered to pay for her medical expenses. Jareck said he did not have the girl's name.

A hospital spokeswoman would not comment on the girl's condition, citing patient privacy laws.

Martin said he was relieved it wasn't worse.

"As soon as it hit, I heard the sound. I knew it wasn't a good sound and then I saw him grab her," Martin told MLB.com. "It didn't look like she was moving so that was scary. ... I mean, I've hit somebody before but not where they had to be rushed to the hospital."

scary stuff.. I was 20 ft away from a kid (about 9 I think) that caught a hockey puck that came over the glass with his mouth... wasn't pretty at all.. security was there in seconds and ran with him.. I'm sure he lost teeth. he definatley lost a lot of blood.. I couldn't tell where the puck went..

Pac - I agree that the rant is stupid. But I don't think the situation calls for an added gift.

I know what it feels like to take a ball to the chest and have your wind knocked out... but the kid already got a home run ball from one of the greatest players ever to play the game. The bat was unnecessary.

What I agree with least about the rant is the kid did catch the ball and he stayed in front of it like you should.

Ball games and hockey games can be quite dangerous.

I guess this is just a case where I agree that Albert is being too nice to the kid.

The pussification of America is going on, this might not be the best case, but nowadays kids get rewarded for just trying, the idea man nowadays is a metro instead of a lumberjack or something else manly and people overuse sanitizer like dirt is going to kill them, we have an immune system for a reason. I could go on but I'll end this rant here.

Too nice to a kid? Hmmm...normally I don't have a problem with such a concept, being an admitted curmudgeon myself. However, this seems to be nothing more than a pro athlete reaching out to a young fan, letting him know he hopes the kid is OK. Baseball players interact with the kids far more than they do with adults at games, practices, etc.

BTW, when the kid goes back to school, he's going to have a cool story to tell. And guess who his favorite player is? Even at the most cynical level, that is good marketing/PR by the player.

I'm sure Pujols probably felt bad, giving the kid the bat was his way of showing that.

If you smacked some kid with a line drive, I'm sure you'ld feel bad too. Giving him a bat is just a gesture to show that you aren't an ****. It's a gift of guilt.

In a way, if he'd gotten hit in the mouth, might have been better...then he could have said he got hit in the piehole by Pujol.

America IS getting pussified. It's all that book learnin'.

and this is why I always sit below the galssand behind the net when I go to games

I wonder if this is how Ram got his new bat..?