The guy who fell over the rail at Rangers ballpark tonight and went head first into the area behind the scoreboard in left field just died (as I write this). (AAndro story here)
This is the third person who has fallen over the rails at Rangers Ballpark in now the 18th season the park has been open. A woman fell over in year 1 in 1994, and they raised the rails due to that.
Someone fell over last year, and he ended up being OK. Tonight’s guy
There’s video of the guy falling off at this link, although given he’s since died, I’m not sure if they’ll leave that video up or not.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot about safety rails in the next few days. When this happened in July of last year, a lot was made about how the height of the rails was above what “code” said they should be. The bigger problem generally is people leaning that far out to get balls, and losing their center of gravity. No amount of rail can stop that unless you screen every one off, and that won’t happen.
Apparently the guy went over throwing a ball up there that Josh threw into the stands at the end of an inning. A tweet by Anthony Andro said “Nolan Ryan on Josh Hamilton: Josh is very distraught over this, as the entire team is.”
God Bless his family. They’ll need it.
UPDATE: It gets worse. If you watch the video footage, there’s a little kid behind the guy who fell over the rail. NBC5 news said that was the guy’s kid.
UPDATE 2: The fan, finally named as Shannon Stone, was laid to rest on July 11th. It sucks. Still. The shock isn’t as hard, but man, this whole thing sucks.
Finally, Derek Holland pitched a fantastic game. He won 6-0. Who cares?