COLUMBUS, Ohio — It’s an unwritten certainty: your first, in-person time at the baseball diamond is the most memorable.
“First ever baseball game,” Akie Benjamin said. “Watching the game, then the sun just comes out so bright and then my grandma says something to me and I just look over and then I just get hit with a ball and then I just blackout and then I just hear people yelling 911, ambulance, ambulance.”
Benjamin, 16, was at the Columbus Clippers' home opener, Tuesday. In the second inning, Alex Call put his first hit of the year over the left-field wall, giving a moment of panic to Benjamin’s mother, Tiffany Hammons.
“As soon as I came back up to see where the ball had landed, my mom was holding my son,” she said.
The ball had hit Benjamin on the right side of the head.
“The whole situation went unnoticed” Hammons said.
Not knowing what to do Hammons said she walked her son to the medical station where he was eventually checked out by medics. She says they asked a series of questions but never did a thorough examination. Benjamin was given ice and was released back to his mother.
“As time went on he started feeling it,” Hammons said. “[His] face started swelling up [and] that’s what made me take him to the emergency room because I started getting scared and it was close to bedtime.”
Not wanting him to fall asleep with a possible head injury, Hammons says she took her son to the ER where doctors called it a minor head injury.
An email to 10TV from the Clippers President and GM, Ken Schnacke, says the organization feels “terrible this happened and will make amends.” Schnacke says Benjamin was checked out but that a report was never filed saying it got lost in the shuffle because at the same time of this incident, “medics were treating another fan suffering from high blood pressure.”
Hammons wants to be clear: she’s not asking for money. She says she’s asking for change, wanting to make sure every incident is thoroughly handled.
She and her son say despite this the game was everything they hoped it would be with the Clippers winning 5-0. Benjamin was given a free T-shirt and was allowed to keep the home run ball.
The next time, though, he says he’ll come better prepared.
“I would say always pay attention, one,” he said. “And, two, keep a glove.”
Schnacke says the organization just extended the netting around the ballpark to try to mitigate people getting hurt from balls, however it’s impossible to completely net everything.
Hammons says she has talked with the organization and they told her they will get Benjamin’s ball signed.