Wherever "catching a baseball" ranks — and it's high, apparently — it ought to be made less important.
Keith Carmickle — the man pictured above hanging on by his right arm, with his baseball glove dangling from his left hand — almost fell about 20 feet to a pool deck below at Chase Field after he chased a home run hit to center by Prince Fielder(notes).
Thankfully, he didn't catch the ball. Or fall. But he almost went over completely. As the Associated Press reports, he was saved by his brother and a friend.
"I thought: I've lived a good life," Carmickle said about dangling.
Seated in a small section of seats above the right-field fence, Carmickle, of Kingman [Ariz.], and his group had already grabbed home-run balls by Robinson Cano(notes) and Adrian Gonzalez(notes) and were looking to add another to their collection when Fielder came up in the second round of the derby.
Trying to snare a towering shot by Fielder, Carmickle stepped up onto a metal table about 18 inches wide and reached down to catch the ball. It hit a wall several feet below Carmickle. His momentum carried him forward, headfirst over a short railing at the back of the table.
Carmickle was headed for a hard landing when his friend, Aaron Nelson, grabbed his legs and his brother, Kraig, grabbed him around the arms. Carmickle dangled briefly over a deck where a couple of cameras were positioned behind Chase Field's pool before being pulled back up to his seat as the crowd above and below gasped.
Carmickle's good fortune came on the same day as a memorial service for Shannon Stone, the man who fell at Rangers Ballpark on Thursday and died that day as a result of his injuries after trying to catch a ball. Stone's story must have slipped Carmickle's mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment