My oldest son, Jack’s Outlaw team won their first game of the East Boise Classic tournament. They call them an Outlaw team because they are not the official league All Stars, just a bunch of kids who want to keep on playing ball in the summer. Before the second game of the day, during pre-game warmups he was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
His assistant coach was hitting fly balls to his team mates in the outfield. Jack was in a group of kids waiting to catch. He was looking at the other team warming up when he noticed a team mate reacting to something. He turned up in time to just see a ball falling right on him. As he started to react by moving away from it, it nailed him in the lower right side of his nose. There was a loud pop and he went down as if he were shot.
I was in the stands and heard the pop and saw a kid go down, but didn’t realize who it was. It’s never your kid, right? Then I saw the coach bolt out of the dugout to aide and I knew it was serious. So I started onto the field to see if I could help. As I approached the crowd of kids I recognized Jack’s new shoes and then saw his jersey number. It was my kid.
He was facing down in the grass, bleeding pretty good and crying. It was very scary at first, until the coach did a few tests to make sure he was seeing straight and knew his name. Turns out his coach is an EMT, so he was reacting as he was trained.
We got some paper towels to stop the bleeding and an ice pack for the swelling. His mom had went to the car to fetch some chairs when she got back she learned he was hurt. We took him to the car and drove to a primary care office to have him looked at. Two hours later he had been looked at and X-rayed. He didn’t have a fracture or a broken nose. He lucked out.
His team went on to lose that day and were out of the tournament. But the East Boise All Star teams did pretty good. The Nine-year-olds won the title and so did the 12-year-olds. Laurie and I went back Sunday and watched some great baseball being played by the 10-year-olds and the Twelve’s.
Jack will be back on the field later this week.
Now both of my kids have had face injuries this year in baseball. His younger brother hit himself in the eye with a batted ball in the batting cage. He endured a shiner for a week or two. Of course his dad was pitching to him, so I was present for both incidents.
One more month and then we’re into football season. ;-)
Oh, ouch! I’m so glad nothing was broken — Jack has a great nose, so he doesn’t need an excuse for a nose job.