Police say a woman who was hit in the head with a broken bat and was bleeding from the head as she was being carried out of Fenway Park Friday has life threatening injuries.
Boston police spokesman David Estrada said all or part of the bat hit her during the game between the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics.
The spectator was carried out of the stadium after the top of the second inning. She was hit by Oakland’s Brett Lawrie’s bat that broke on a groundout to second base for the second out of the inning. The game was halted in the middle of the second inning as emergency crews tended to the woman and wheeled her off the field on a stretcher.
The woman's name was not immediately released and more details on her condition were not available.
Alex Merlis, of Brookline, Massachusetts, told The Associated Press said he was sitting behind the woman when the broken bat flew into the seats just a few rows from the field between home plate and the third base dugout.
"It was violent," he said of the impact to her forehead and top of her head. "She bled a lot. A lot. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that."
Merlis said the woman was sitting with a small child and a man. After she was injured, the man was tending to her and other people were trying to console the child.
The woman was taken to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a hospital worker said early Saturday she has no information for her condition.
"You try to keep her in your thoughts and, hopefully, everything's all right and try to get back to the task at hand," Lawrie said when asked how he was able to refocus after what happened. "Hopefully everything's OK and she's doing all right.
"I've seen bats fly out of guys' hands in(to) the stands and everyone's OK, but when one breaks like that, has jagged edges on it, anything can happen."
Major League Baseball expressed its concerns with flying broken bats and the danger they posed in 2008. A study issued by the league prompted it to implement a series of changes to bat regulations for the following season.
