Bassitt injury a grim reminder of baseball's deadly potential

A hard line shot from the bat of a left-handed hitter.

The pitcher instinctively lifting his glove, but too late to prevent the ball from striking his face.

The concerned looks of players at the pitcher on his knees, his head buried in a blood-soaked towel.

The sight sent my memory reeling back 40 years.

When Sox left-handed hitter Brian Goodwin felled Oakland pitcher Chris Bassitt with a liner Tuesday at Guaranteed Rate Field, it called to mind another game between Tony La Russa's White Sox and the A's on May 26, 1981, this time at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

I remember it was a late-night game, and I had the TV tuned to Channel 9, ready to relax in air-conditioned suburban comfort with a West Coast game before bedtime.

Instead, I watched stunned as, in the top of the 8th, with the Sox up 4-0, two outs, and Rusty Kuntz pinch running for Greg Luzinski on first, lefty Sox slugger Harold Baines turned on an 88 mph pitch from right-handed reliever Michael "Bo" McLaughlin, smashing the ball against the pitcher's face at a velocity of 110 mph.

Baseball can be a game of athletic grace and statistical beauty.

But one object gives it the element of danger - the lethal power of a ball in flight.

Unless a pitcher adequately defends himself, a batted ball whizzing toward the mound at roughly half the speed of a NASCAR racer can dispense injury or worse.

As Ralph Wiley, writing in the Oakland Tribune June 4, 1981, said, "Baines' swing is sweet. Hours earlier, in batting practice, he had lifted drive after drive more than 400 feet into the right field bleachers. And he hit this tailing fastball just that well or better, only he hit it right back up the middle."

In the hospital where he was treated for his injuries, which included a chip off the left and bottom of the left eye's orbital socket and fractures to the cheekbone, the jawline and the nasal bone, two wires were permanently installed in McLaughlin's head.

McLaughlin told Wiley, "I saw everything. I saw the seams (on the ball). It was the first time I'd ever faced (Baines). He had a quick bat. He turned on it good. You just don't expect to get hit in the face."

When I looked up the history of pitchers getting beaned by batted balls, I found numerous examples.

One of the most famous incidents involved Cleveland pitcher Herb Score, who was struck in his right eye by a line drive hit by the Yankees' Gil McDougald May 7, 1957.

Billy Martin, McLaughlin's manager, was in the Yankee lineup for that game.

After the injury, Score, who won 20 games the year before, was never the same, even though he pitched until 1962, his final three seasons with the White Sox.

In 2012, another A's pitcher, former Sox hurler Brandon McCarthy, suffered a blow to the right side of the head off a line drive by the Angels' Erick Aybar, sustaining an epidural hemorrhage, brain contusion, and skull fracture. He underwent emergency surgery at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

After the Yankees' Masahiro Tanaka was hit in the head by teammate Giancarlo Stanton's liner during a practice last year, one writer suggested that MLB require pitchers to wear protective headgear.

However, in his FanSided article, the writer, Ryan Morik, noted that baseball is slow to change old habits, pointing out batting helmets weren't required until 1958, nearly 40 years after Cleveland's Ray Chapman was killed by a pitch from the Yankees' Carl Mays, while netting wasn't mandatory along dugouts until 2018.

After reconstructive facial surgery, McLaughlin was released from Merritt Hospital in June 1981. He returned to the mound Sept. 2, 1981 against Cleveland. In one inning of work he allowed two runs on a Mike Hargrove home run.

The 27-year-old McLaughlin said that day, "The chances of it happening once are so slim. If it does happen again, well, it's like the old saying, 'Turn the other cheek.' "

McLaughlin pitched one more season in 1982, going 0-4 with a 4.84 ERA in 48.1 innings.

Eventually he became a pitching coach, spending time in the Cubs organization.

Released Tuesday night from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago with stitches for two facial lacerations, Bassitt, who was diagnosed with a displaced tripod fracture in his right cheek that will require surgery, tweeted, "God is good. Can't wait to get back!"

Bassitt's return is open to question, as is when we will see another injury on a comebacker to the mound.