60 feet, six inches may seem like a safe distance to some but don’t include Major League Baseball pitchers in said category.
Tuesday night at Chase Field the never-ending threat of danger became reality for Arizona Diamondbacks’ rookie Archie Bradley who was struck with a line drive off the bat of Colorado Rockies’ slugger Carlos Gonzalez in the second inning of the D-Backs 12-5 win.
Following the incident the 22-year-old right-hander was taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center where, miraculously, testing showed no major concussion symptoms. Bradley never lost consciousness, nor bled much from the line drive which traveled off Gonzalez’s bat at 115 mph.
One baseball insider believes, despite some pitchers wearing protective head-gear in hopes of preventing situations, the risk is almost unavoidable.
“It is scary,” ESPN baseball insider Pedro Gomez told Sports360AZ.com Wednesday morning. “But in all honesty I don’t think there’s anything that can be done in terms of safety. It’s not about rolling the dice. That’s what the game is…you just hope that something overly serious never happens.”
Gomez has discussed the potential danger with his son Rio, a freshman left-handed relief pitcher at the University of Arizona.
“They’re not out there thinking, ‘Oh God, any pitch could come right back at me,'” he explained. “It comes with that part of the job.”
One of the bright spots through the first month of the season, Bradley was placed on the 15-day disabled list Wednesday afternoon with a right sinus fracture.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Bradley said to the media on Wednesday afternoon.
He said his teeth are sore but there is no damage to them.
Eric Sorenson
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