Prayers go out to boy hit by foul ball at Scrappers game

NILES — Lots of prayers are going out this morning from the staff of the Mahoning Valley Scrappers after a 4-year-old boy was hit in the head with a foul ball at a Scrappers game Wednesday night and taken to a Youngstown hospital.

Dave Smith, Scrappers General manager, said the injury, which occurred during the second game of a doubleheader, appears to be the worst one in the 11 years the professional minor league team has played here.

A couple of fans are generally injured every year by baseballs, but Smith said he doesn’t recall a previous incident involving a child this young being struck directly this way.

“Everybody’s concerned when it involves such a young child. Everyone here’s just hoping and praying that this has a positive outcome,” Smith said. “We’re like everybody else — waiting to hear,” he said today from his office at Eastwood Field behind the Eastwood Mall.

The boy was seated along the first base line with his family, one section out from the Scrappers dugout when the line drive struck him in the head, Smith said.

A person who was attending the game e-mailed The Vindicator saying that the boy was in the first row and was taken immediately from the game in an ambulance.

“The crowd was horrified,” the writer said of the accident. “We’re sick to our stomachs.”

Lane Life Trans is the ambulance company the Scrappers employs to stand by at its games. Workers attended to the boy within moments, Smith said.

Off-duty Niles police officers were working the game, but the department did not investigate the incident or file a report on it. Neither the Scrappers nor the Niles Police Department was able to provide the boy’s name or the name of the hospital where he was taken.