If you're a pitcher, you're always vulnerable to batted balls

The two worst nights I had in 16 years as a sportswriter came covering minor league baseball.

I was reminded of one of them the other day when I saw that Cincinnati relief pitcher Aroldis Chapman had been hit in the face with a batted ball.


It's the scariest sight in baseball, and on a summer night in 1983, I saw it happen right in front of me. I was covering the Gastonia Expos of the South Atlantic League. The team would go on to win the league championship that summer, and their best pitcher was a 19-year-old from Illinois named John Glidewell.

Two starts before, he had pitched a no-hitter, and he would finish the season with a 14-7 record.

But on this night, he grooved a fastball and the hitter connected solidly with a line drive back up the middle that hit Glidewell directly in the face. He dropped as if he had been shot. For nearly 10 minutes, he lay there, face down, without moving at all.

We didn't think he was dead -- believe me, you don't think that -- but the thought of how his face would look was on everyone's mind. Imagine our relief when he finally started moving and there was nothing wrong with his face -- no broken bones, no eye damage. Just a headache that would last about a week.

Ironically, Glidewell eventually developed arm trouble. He missed the entire 1984 season and he pitched ineffectively in 1985 before leaving baseball at age 21. He never won another game after 1983.

LaChappa 10 years later.

What happened 13 years later was almost worse. Some friends of mine and I were at a Rancho Cucamonga Quakes California League game in the first week of the 1996 season. I had brought my 11-year-old son and his closest friend.

Late in the game, a Quakes relief pitcher named Matt LaChappa was warming up in the bullpen when all of a sudden he collapsed. There was no apparent reason for it, although we later learned he had suffered a massive heart attack. Even though I wasn't working that night, I spent the next couple of hours playing reporter as we tried to get updates from the hospital.

At one point we were told he had died, but they managed to resuscitate him. He survived,although he was permanently disabled and never played baseball again. The Quakes were a San Diego farm team at the time and the Padres did a wonderful thing. They kept him on the payroll permanently, which enabled him to keep his insurance and made sure he got all the treatment he needed.

He's still considered part of the Padres family.

Neither Glidewell nor LaChappa was ever going to be a star on the level of Aroldis Chapman, whose 105-mile per hour fastball has made him one of the best relief pitchers in baseball.

But they played ball.

And they survived it with some good memories.

That, at least, is a happy ending.