Getting hit with a baseball sucks.

It’s a piece of cork/rubber wrapped in yarn. It weighs five ounces. And when someone throws it as hard as they can and it hits you flush, it hurts.

From a 2012 Tim Kurkjian article about what it feels like to get hit by a major league pitcher:

The pain is excruciating. “Anyone who says it doesn’t hurt is insane,” [Tigers outfielder Brennan] Boesch said. “It hurts, but adrenaline helps. The game is on national TV. Everyone sees you. Don’t show it.”

[Angels outfielder Torii Hunter] “If it’s going to hit you in the knee, you turn so it hits you in the back of the leg. It’s amazing how quickly the human body can move when you’re trying to avoid something hitting you. You have to know your soft spots.”

“If it’s going to hit you in the knee, you turn so it hits you in the back of the leg.”

Hm.

More from Kurkjian:

The Braves’ Eric Hinske said, “Sidney Ponson hit me on the inside of the knee with a 95 [mph fastball]. I thought I had been shot with a gun. I went down like a sack of potatoes. But I stayed in the game. You wrap it up and keep playing. The lump on my shin was there at least a month.”

“That’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt on a baseball field,” LaRoche said. (after taking one to the back of the knee.)  “The ball hit me so hard, it bounced halfway back to the pitcher’s mound. I went straight to the ground after that one. When I got back up, I had to take a knee. I was just trying not to throw up.“

The pitch from White Sox starter Jose Quintana that hit Guyer last night was a little over 93 MPH. The ball came off his knee at around a Josh Tomlin change up.

Watch the vine and cover up his lower half with your finger. Looks like the most nonchalant ball 4 of all time. Someone probably had to tell him he’d actually been hit.

Guyer now leads all of MLB in hit by pitches with 30. That’s eight more than the guy in second place (St. Ignatius product Derek Dietrich), or the same number that separates numbers 2 and 7 on the leader board.

The Oakland Athletics have 32 as a team.

Hughie Jennings holds the single season record with 51 in 1896 but there have been just five players to record more than 30 in a single season since 1900.

He also eats crickets.

 

KEEP THE CHIEF