by Michael Duca

SCOTTSDALE AZ–26 year old Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Aroldis Chapman who had surgery for a ball hitting him above the left eye and nose by Royals catcher Salvador Perez, was declared by doctors as a very lucky young man. This is a very hard thing for me to talk about because I was there in that ball park when it happened that night.

What was about to happen some how was so crystal clear to me that I screamed out “Oh my God” in the pressbox just before Chapman went down which was before he was hit by the ball. Pitchers today tend to throw a little bit sideways and fall off to the side, they don’t land in the kneeling position or finish the throw with the glove in front of their faces.

To look at the old baseball cards from the 50s and 60s and the pitchers posed the way that they threw and you actually saw the pitcher winding up with the glove actually in front of their face there was a reason for that. The sound that was made in the stadium was unbelievable and the fact that was the last sound heard in that stadium until the ambulance drove up 12 minutes later was even more amazing.

There were 7,000 in the park and there was dead silence the entire time, Chapman is a very lucky guy and if the ball had struck him maybe as little as a quarter of an inch to one side to the other instead of hitting the heavy bone above his left eye and hit directly over the bone that supports your nose and gripped into his sinuses which could be fatal.

This is a terrible thing and this is a risk that players take and this is more than they take out on the field, personally I would like to see pitchers grilled in youth baseball on their mechanics and you finish up square and you give yourself a fighting chance to deflect something like that with a glove.

You also have to feel for Perez this is a young 23 year old rising star catcher a solid defensive player a great hitter for an up and comning Kansas City team and the first thing you have to do is work on how this and how this is going to effect him and tell him he was just doing his job. Chapman was all over the place in that inning he had already walked four hitters in that inning.

Chapman had loaded the bases and then reloaded the bases again and I haven’t heard of anyone talking to Perez, the press or the players. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Kansas City PR Director Mike Swanson about how Perez was taking it. It’s a hard, hard thing for him to know that he caused a career threatening or life threatening injury to someone else.

The news was good about Chapman on Friday they were able to insert the titanium plate to help stablize his eye socket and he could be able to throw as little as 14 days and he could be back on the mound as little as two months.

Michael Duca is covering the Cactus League in Arizona for Sportstalk radio