ROCKY HILL — There’s nothing Kevin Sweeney loves more than a beautiful day cheering on the Red Sox at Fenway Park. He says he was settling in for nine innings of bliss at Saturday’s game against the Houston Astros.
“Beautiful day, five rows off the field between third base and home base. Behind the netting. Red Sox are playing good baseball. Everything was perfect.”
Until the third pitch.
“Just boom. The back of my head. Almost like a sledgehammer. At first I thought of the Boston Marathon and that something had happened in the area.”
The bat cracked, sending the barrel flying over the protective netting, hitting Sweeney in the head.
“Before the game, i guess god has a sense of humor because I was lamenting the fact that the screen goes too far and it really affects the view and people should really just pay attention to the field and not play on their cellphones.”
While getting 10 stitches at Beth Israel, Sweeney thought about his new appreciation for the protective netting, but he thinks ballparks need to do even more to keep fans safe.
“I don’t think it obstructs the view in any way, a top over it so what happened to me and others, i think with a baseball the other day, couldn’t happen again. Like they do behind home base.
The bat wasn’t the only thing that hurt. The long-time Red Sox fan caught Ortiz’s milestone walk-off double on the radio.
“I kept thinking, what a game to miss.”
“I know I’ll be back but it’ll be hard to duplicate that one.”
He is laying low for the next few days, but is already looking forward to his next game.
“I believe in getting right back on the horse,” “So it will be, but that’s why I need to go soon and get that behind me. I plan on doing that.”
