Posted on 03/09/2016 7:38:39 AM PST by heartwood
A father stops a flying baseball bat that was inches away from hitting his son’s face. A photographer captures the moment. You can guess what happens next.
“It’s been crazy,” said Shaun Cunningham, 37, the father from Ocala, Fla., who has been declared a hero in several headlines. “The last 24 hours have been out of control.”
The near-hit happened on Saturday while Cunningham and his 8-year-old son, Landon, were cheering on the Atlanta Braves in a spring training game in Orlando against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Christopher Horner, a photographer for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, took the photo that has ricocheted around the Internet. He was positioned on the third-base line, across from where Cunningham and his son were sitting, when he saw the bat come out of the hands of Danny Ortiz, a Pirates outfielder.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
“No big deal. I got this.”
Wouldn’t have wanted to have been in that family’s shoes at that moment. Great stop.But I will say that when I went to a Phillies game a couple of years ago (they won) I traded seats with wife to be the one closer to home plate.
A bit better chance of making that play if, Heaven forefend, the need were to arise . . .
?
No need to go to the hospital... Dad was on the job. Protecting his kid from a negligent ballplayer.
Yes.
Instant heirloom!
Not legally. It says so on your ticket.
Sure. That's so the ballpark can afford their liability insurance.
But tell me, under what circumstance does it make sense for a batter to fling his bat into the stands? Why does the batter get an ethical pass for that?
Are you assuming the batter did it intentionally?
It’s cool the Dad reacted so quickly, but holy crap I hope he took the dumb phone away from the kid for the rest of the game. I mean come on, you are at a ball game. Maybe this is the old man in me, but this kills me. How much friggen entertainment does a kid need? I count 3 phones and an old fashioned camera in that pic, guess which one the baseball gods directed the bat to fly into?
Freegards
The father said his son was taking one photo, with the father’s phone, to send to his mother, and that he, the father, was on extra alert while his son was doing that. The boy plays baseball and was watching the game, but the photo does make him look like a clueless device-addicted kid.
I think that big strong arm would have still gone out even if the boy had seen the bat coming and ducked.
No, I'm asserting that he did it negligently. Intentional action vs. negligent action... I'm saying it was the latter.
That’s cool. I thought about the photo thing, but just played the averages, and was wrong.
Freegards
Are these people nuts? You don’t sit in exposed seats at a MLB game and not wear a glove. Don’t see a single glove in the pic. Great save by the dad, though.
This looks like bat country.
The kid was oblivious to the danger, looking at his phone.
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