Good to see you have a sense of humor Newsman. I never know how people will take a friendly joke.

Humor is, as I understand it, a higher level brain function that is often altered if the brain is damaged. Which suggests that the external damage may be the worse of it. A very good thing.

I imagine the ER staff wasn't too concerned, because compared to some of the patients they see, yours must have been a routine grounder, so to speak.

Good luck.

My uncle was hit by a bus last year and definitely isn´t the man he used to be. For example, the work he once did on his own now has to be done by 3 people and he can´t read sheet music as quickly as he used to.

Ironraven, I can't really say that I've rehearsed that situation. I guess my reflexes come from simply learning to read the baseball off the bat; after seeing thousands of hits it becomes easy to know where the ball is going. As soon as the batter contacted the ball, I knew the ball was going to come close to me.

Art, this incident opens me to all sorts of jokes. A few exmaples: Maybe it knocked some sense into you; did the CT scan proved you don't have a brain?; it couldn't have hurt your vision, you're already blind. If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we're taking ourselves too seriously.

Joost, sorry to hear about your uncle; my dad got hit by a Jeep a year ago. It knocked him down, skinned his arm -- he was lucky. If find that the older we get, the less we can bounce back from injuries.

Talking to the coaches over the weekend, they said I managed to move my head enough so that it hit me where it did -- rather than square between the eyes. Both coaches said they saw one of their worst fears when it hit me, and they knew I was dead.

My face started swelling last night, puffing up. My eyelids are starting to get dark red and droop. Cheeks, especially the one on my right side, are getting puffy.

But still, almost no pain. Took a shower this morning, scrubbed the wound lightly with a cloth; seemed to have loosened some hairs from the scabs so that the slight burning sensation I had is gone.

On Friday, I won the lottery of life. Unless there's some nasty brewing in my brain. Time will tell.

Wow! If I weren't exhausted right now I'd do the force calculations to compare the power of being hit by that ball with being hit by bullets of different calibers. Someone big and powerful was looking out for you, that's for sure.

Glad you are alive and remember chicks dig scars!

-Blast

p.s. What was the final score of the ballgame?

Glad you're OK.

As you may know, a minor league coach was killed in July 2007 by a foul ball.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290335,00.html

Here's to hoping there will be no lasting aftereffects.



Well, I'm bored at work so I'll take this on.

A 5 1/8 ounce baseball going at 100 MPH converts to 2242 grains and 146 2/3 feet per second, for about 107 ft-lbs of energy.

A 230 grain .45 ACP round at 850 FPS gets you about 369 ft-lbs, and a 115 grain 9mm round at 1250 FPS gets you about 399 ft-lbs. A 40 grain .22 LR at 1080 FPS gets you about 104 ft-lbs.

The cross-section of a .22 LR is much less than the ball, of course, so it's a lot more likely to make holes in organs that work better without them.

The moral of this story is to do what you did, and duck.

As someone who has had over a dozen serious TBI, you are indeed lucky that they did not find any hematoma, I may have glossed over if you mentioned a concussion being found by the exams.

Be patient. Even with none of that, you will probably be forgetful about the points your talking about and forget words. Head injuries are notorious bleeders. So that is not surprising.

You didn't dodge the ball, but you dodged the worse of it. Heal well.