On Chase Utley Getting Beaned Without Knowing It

Edit: I didn’t see the note that Utley actually might have gotten hurt from this. I meant no disrespect, I promise.

He turns to the umpire and asks a question, presumably some variation of “Did that hit me in the head?” The umpire’s vigorous nod seems like it was accompanied with a “Yes, you idiot,” though the last two words might have just been implied. Utley looked around, made one of those they-brought-me-the-wrong-flavor-of-pie-at-The-Peach-Pit-again-but-I’ll-play-it-off-and-pretend-that’s-what-I-ordered-because-I’m-Dylan-McKay looks, and scooted to first.

Yeah, one of those. Utley’s a cool cat, and he’s not going to let a 91-mph fastball to the head distract him. He might be a robot, like Roy Halladay, or his head might be made of cement, but whatever the reason for his nonplussed reaction, we’ve now seen a player get hit in the head with a fastball, then asking for confirmation that he got hit in the head with a fastball. The old “You see something new every game” cliché strikes again.

Most statisticians say a sample size of 30 is all you need to draw definitive conclusions¹, so now that we know that Utley is okay, this is the perfect opportunity to draw sociological and anthropological data. There were about 30 people in view of the camera when Utley was hit. Here are the reactions of those people:

The most interesting of them all might be the two people who start yelling at the pitcher before they know if Utley’s brains are leaking out of his eye socket, but don’t ignore the woman who doesn’t make an “o” with her mouth as she watches the ball. She just watches without making a sound -- she’s cold, calm, knowing. More than a little creepy. She’s the true outlier, and if you recognize her, you should probably break off all contact with her.

Again, Utley’s okay, and that’s the larger point. If Utley had crumpled in a heap at home plate, there would have been no fun to find in this. The Phillies postseason aspirations might have been dealt a serious blow, and Eric O’Flaherty would have become the most hated man in Philadelphia.

As is, we got to learn a few things. One, Chase Utley doesn’t have functioning nerve endings in his head. Two, modern batting helmets are awesome. And three, people react mostly in the same way to a ball hitting another human being in the head and careening over the backstop, but there are always a few unpredictable freaks. It’s never a good thing for someone to get hit in the head with a fastball, but if it happens, we can only hope that everyone is okay, and that we can learn a little something from the experience.

^{1 No, they don’t}