Baseball...a dangerous game at any level

My 17-year-old grandson, Daniel Price, loves baseball. But yesterday afternoon in the small, rural town of Parachute, Colorado, his playing days came to a halt.

In the first game of a high school doubleheader against a team from Roaring Fork, Colorado, Daniel was hit just below the helmet by a pitch. The pitch, estimated at 75 to 80 miles per hour, sailed inside on Daniel, a right-handed hitter.

Daniel's Grand Valley High School team, lost the doubleheader, but my grandson may have lost a lot more. The neurologist in nearby Grand Junction, Colorado, said today, just hours before his release from the hospital, that Daniel should seriously consider putting baseball on the back burner for a while, or maybe, for good.

"I was guessing curve ball and I thought I had picked up the seams on the ball, but the ball came inside and I just couldn't get out of the way," Daniel said, from his hospital bed this morning.

My grandson has already had a couple of concussions in his 17 years on this earth, so I'm sure the Doc took that into consideration before offering Daniel advice on whether to continue to play the "game" of baseball. My grandson was in good spirits when he left the hospital today and even said, "Grandpa, I think I'll be the team manager for a while."

There's no question in my mind...he'll be good at that, too.