Beanballs leave mark on big leaguers

"Pitching is the art of instilling fear." -- Sandy Koufax, Hall of Famer

Pat Tabler can sit and chat about getting hit in the head with a fastball as clearly now as the day it happened, going on 30 years ago.

"Milt Wilcox … in Cleveland … right off my head," says the former World Series winner with the Toronto Blue Jays who at that time was playing on the south shore of Lake Erie.

"Tigers and Indians … got hit on the side of the helmet and the ball dropped straight down. It was kind of off my helmet and the helmet went straight up in the air."

Tabler was plunked 24 times in his 12-year career, but only once did he take one off the head. That he can remember it at all is amazing, because many who get it in the noggin can't recall anything afterwards.

"It's no fun," he says. "You see your life flash before your eyes."

What makes him thankful is that he wasn't hit "like you've seen some of the high hits, it glanced off the helmet, it didn't hurt as bad as some of the other ones I've seen."

They will rarely admit it, but there are only two things in the game that send a chill up the spine of a professional ball player — the shot hit back through the box, such as the one that felled Jays pitcher J.A. Happ earlier this year in Tampa, and the fastball to the head.

For the latter, each generation has an incident that defines all the others, going back to 1920 when Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians was hit in the head and killed by the Yankees' Carl Mays. That is the only death to occur in the major leagues.

Ron Cey of the Los Angeles Dodgers took one at 95 miles an hour off the helmet flap from New York's Goose Gossage in Game 5 of the 1981 World Series. Watching it today can give you shivers.

Cey would return for the next game and help L.A. wrap up the series.

This generation's moment came on July 9, 2005, when rookie Adam Greenberg stepped in for his first Major League at bat and was promptly drilled in the head by Valerio de los Santos of the Florida Marlins. The subsequent post-concussion symptoms and vertigo effectively ended his big-league career.

He would get one at bat, after a huge online campaign, with the Marlins in 2012, striking out against R.A. Dickey, then with the New York Mets.

Players have been beaned all through baseball's history, but when you consider the dynamics of the thing, the real surprise is how often people have been able to get out of the way.

Faster than the blink of an eye

Science tells us that a 95 mph fastball takes about 0.4 of a second to travel from the mound to the plate.

Simple enough, but consider that the distance isn't really 60 feet, 6 inches; at release point it's closer to 54 feet. And the only real chance the batter has to pick up the ball is the first 12 feet. And you really have about as long as it takes to say the "one" in "one-thousand" to make these decisions:

• A) Is the ball coming at my head, or is it really a Roy Halladay-type sweeping curve that starts behind my noggin and then comes back over the plate? If I dive out of the way of the latter, I shall be embarrassed.
• B) If the ball is coming for my head, is it more inside so I can turn inside myself and try to take it off my meaty shoulder, or more high so I might drop, or more behind me so I can duck forward?

How can you possibly make those decision before that 2,400 pounds of force smacks you upside the skull?

"We've done it for such a long time that we've trained ourselves to zone certain areas to hit," says Houston catcher Jason Castro, in his third year at the top level. "And when you see the ball coming at you, it's just purely reactionary.

"You see the pitch, you react to it, then it's almost luck if you're going to get out of the way."

It is, Tabler believes, an instinct learned from the earliest days facing live pitching.

He remembers being 10 or 12 and finishing a Little League game back in Ohio before wandering over to see the high schoolers going on another diamond. He couldn't believe how fast it was.

"And I was like, 'There's no way I'm ever going to be able to hit a guy throwing that fast,'" he says.

By high school, his instincts had naturally caught up. Same feeling in the low minors, the high minors and finally the big leagues. You catch up and adjust to the speed.

As a coach of young players himself, back in the Cincinnati area, Tabler uses a common technique he believes strongly in — tennis balls — to train young hitters how to avoid and how to take pitches up and in.

Courage of the middle evening

Perhaps the hardest part of getting brushed back around the head is picking yourself up and stepping right back in again.

"That's part of being a professional hitter," says Toronto's Rajai Davis, who has avoided a few headed for his head but never, as far as he can remember, actually taken one off the dome.

"You've got to have short-term memory to be successful. Put the past behind you. Look forward to what you are about to do and move forward."

Even if the past was, like, 15 seconds ago.

Davis says he's never been frightened to hit. Nervous, perhaps, but never frightened.

"You get your butterflies going, or I do. But the more you play I think the less I feel it."

A few who have been actually beaned never got over it.

"It's happened throughout the history of baseball where guys got hit in the face and they were never the same," says Tabler. "Their front foot would start opening up a little too quickly and the front shoulder would start to open up and they didn't have any chance of hitting the ball."

Castro, who insists having a catcher's experience with handling fast pitches is of no use when you're in the batter's box (completely different angle) says it really comes down to something primal.

"There is a kind of instinct where you recognize that that ball is headed right at you, there's definitely that 'fight or flight' kind of instinct that takes over, and you get out of the way."

That simple?

"It kind of elevates you heart rate a little bit," he says, grinning.

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