A broken bat flew right into the face of a woman during a Boston Red Sox game at Fenway Park Friday night causing life-threatening injuries to the fan.
The Oakland Athletics were leading the game 1-0 when batter Brett Lawrie's bat splintered after the pitch by Red Sox starter Wade Miley, leaving only the handle in his hand. The barrel went flying towards the woman sitting in the second row, near third base.
"It hit on the forehead to the top of the head...it was a blunt trauma and it was a lot of blood. I don't think I've ever seen that much blood," said spectator Alex Merlas, who was sitting nearby, reported the Boston Globe.
The incident left the audience in silence as first responders rendered emergency care on the unidentified woman who was covered in blood and screaming in pain. She was brought to Beth Israel Hospital with "life-threatening" injuries, said the Boston police.
"One of the Scariest moments tonight at Fenway. Praying and hoping that fan is ok," tweeted A's outfielder Josh Reddick.
"She seemed in shock, she was not aware of what was going on, pushing help away," witness Arvald Karp told the Globe. "She was pushing the towel away, and she was out of it."
A fan sitting next to the injured woman even ripped his shirt off and applied it to the bleeding head of the woman.
"You try to keep her in your thoughts and, hopefully, everything's all right and tries to get back to the task at hand. Hopefully everything's OK and she's doing all right," Lawrie said after the game, according to the New York Post. "I've seen bats fly out of guys' hands in [to] the stands and everyone's OK, but when one breaks like that, has jagged edges on it, anything can happen."
Batted balls injure 1,750 fans at Major League Baseball games each year, reported Bloomberg. Fortunately, only one fan has died from getting struck by a foul: In 1970, a 14-year-old boy was killed by a foul line drive off the bat of Manny Mota at Dodger Stadium, according to the Miami Herald.
After the increase of flying broken bat incidents, the MLB made a series of changes to bat regulations, which lessened bat failures about 50 percent since 2009.
