He was 'catching', and died of internal injuries.
Oh my gosh....that was not what I was thinking at all! Ugh!
More likely he was "pitching" and got kicked to death. A friend of mine years ago was a newspaper reporter on the police beat. A story came in about a guy kicked to death in a horse stall. The police were very just-the-facts about it until my friend asked, "Did he have his pants on?" The cop looked annoyed, then admitted that he did not. Like autoerotic asphyxiation, this goes on more than gets reported.