Tulsa 1B coach Mike Coolbaugh killed by line drive

Holy smokes ... this is another one of those situations that reminds you how precious and fragile life is. One second you're out there living life, in the moment, enjoying what you do and the next second it's over.
Let's all take a moment to be thankful and do something special for someone today. Not just the people we love but the people we don't always get along or agree with.

 

I was just going to get into that regarding the metal bats until I noticed your post about it being wood. The speed balls come off those bats, especially back at the mound, is deadly. This must come fairly quickly, or as a new coach, maybe he took his eye off the play a second longer than he should have. That's a real tragedy, especially with a young family. RIP Mike.

 

Ditto, that's the first thing I thought of. We had a photog at our shop that changed her lenses during at bats. The mangager actually came out of the dugout once to stop her.

This story is awful. My prayers for his family.

 

That's a good question. I doubt you'll have many -- if any -- coaches wanting to wear helmets while in the coaching boxes. I remember not wanting to wear one in Teener League when I coached first base because "it looked dumb" and "what are the chances that a baseball's going to hit me in the head?"

 

Just as further reference, most youth hockey coaches are now required to wear helmets to practice.

 

Great post.

 

Since I didn't make this clear enough for some person who shall remain anonymous ....

What I meant was this: This happened in Little Rock, yet the Arkansas Online story makes it look like the Little Rock paper had only a brief. Apparently the full story is only available to subscribers.

 

Not to speak ill of the DOG ... or its writer, with whom I am familiar (I will leave it at that) ... but even its full write-up had info supplied from the World. Probably mostly reax from the Drillers' side.

 

question: how can a 35-year-old ex-player fail to be agile enough to avoid being hit in the head by a foul? something amiss here. could he not have been paying attention? distracted by something? ??? ??? ???

i mean, there's a reason few can recall anything like this ever happening, right? there has to be more to this, no? ??? ??? ???

 

If you are coaching first base and there is a runner on first, you might be looking to see if he has a good lead, is stealing second, getting back to the base etc, etc, etc.

 

Things like that happen in an instant. Chances are, assuming the ball was hit hard enough -- and it probably was, considering it killed a man -- I'd say Mike had less than a couple ticks to get out of the way.