Have You Ever Seen Someone Get Drilled in the Head With a Baseball?

There’s a new helmet out to protect baseball pitchers from line drives, and although helmets are usually thought of as uncool for a few years until they’re accepted as normal, required parts of their particular sport (is there an official helmet-acceptance timeline?), hopefully this one will sidestep the uncool period, because have you ever seen someone get drilled in the head with a baseball? It’s maybe the most horrible thing in sports.

And now here’s my story of seeing someone get hit in the head with a baseball. On television. From the comfort of a home. During a game that thousands of other people saw, too. Which I can only imagine is as bad as getting hit in the head with an actual baseball. (Why did they do this to me?)

Red Sox pitcher Bryce Florie getting drilled in the face on live television in 2000 is a “where were you when” life moment. Like, where were you when you learned Princess Diana died; where were you when you heard the O.J. verdict. Where were you when you saw [whoever] get drilled in the head with a baseball. I was at my friend N____’s house, the Red Sox were playing the Yankees, Florie was young, it was maybe the second inning, and he took a line drive directly into his face. Pitch, swing, crack, face. Right into his eyeball. Or that’s what it looked like, anyway. The most sickening thing, the worst possible noise. He fell backward and the cameras zoomed in, everyone collectively holding their breath, and after a few moments he took his hands away from his face — I’ll never forget the way this looked — when he took his hands away from his face, he made this wide-eyed expression and his eyeball pulsed out of his head. Ohhh my god. Google Image it, or look it up on YouTube (I can’t bring myself to watch it again — actually, I don’t recommend even Googling his name or looking at any thumbnails that pop up), because my memory could be exaggerating, or it could have been a combination of him having a round face and round eyes, and the dramatizing effect of all the blood, but I swear it looked like his eyeball was about to roll down his head, and the cameras should NOT have been zoomed in that closely for the children and entire population watching at home, and I can’t remember if they immediately cut away but oh my god the eyeball.

It turned out he had broken bones all over his face and suffered vision damage but not blindness. He got lots of surgery and returned to baseball a year later but had a tough time and was released shortly thereafter. He’s now a pitching coach in Missouri.

This helmet actually wouldn’t have protected Bryce, though, so the next step is for everyone everywhere to just wear full-head cages. Maybe something like this.

Photo via CBS