A female fan enjoying the game Friday night between the Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox was seriously injured by a broken bat from Brett Lawrie struck her where she sat near the field between home plate and the third base dugout, the game was halted in the second inning when Lawrie broke his bat and part of it hurtled into the stands and struck Tonya Carpenter, the medical crew immediately tending to a bloodied Carpenter as she was wheeled of a few rows off the field between the backstop and Oakland’s dugout on the third-base, the medical rushed her off the field on a stretcher.
The family of the unfortunate victim confirmed Carpenter was responsive and were expecting an improving recovery from her life threatening injury, her son and a friend were with Carpenter at the time of the incident, after she was injured, the man was tending to her and other people were trying to console the distraught child, there are signs posted on the low retaining wall facing fans in the front row that read: “Be Alert. Foul Balls and Bats Hurt.”. She was admitted to the Boston Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and on Saturday her condition was still serious, Carpenter’s family were requesting throughout her recovery some privacy and are grateful to the people the have reached out to Tonya in this horrible accident, after Friday night’s game Brett Lawrie said he hoped Carpenter would recover.
Major League Baseball studied the issue back in 2008 when concerns from this exact issue were arising and the incredible danger from a sudden increase in this incidents occurring from broken bats and foul balls, a year later the implemented a series of changes to the bat regulations, since then, the incidents of this nature have been down 50 percent since the beginning of the 2009 season, referred as multiple-piece bat failures, dozens of fans get unfortunately struck by mostly foul-balls each passing season especially at big league parks, there has been only one recorded fatality in one of the incidents, in 1970 Manny Dota’s foul line drive off the bat killed a 14-year-old fan at Dodger Stadium, another statement released Monday had her condition been upgraded from serious to fair, and her family wanted to extend her status as responsive.
