By Sonja Elmquist
News & Record
GREENSBORO, NC — Carroll Master hadn’t taken his seat yet at the Grasshoppers game Friday. He didn’t know who was at bat. He didn’t even see the hit that sent a baseball wide of first base, into the stands, hitting his left eye, crushing the eye and breaking the bones around it.
The 50-year-old maintenance manager took his family to the game with a big group - 16 friends, neighbors and relatives, including eight children. They had great seats: fourth row, section 113, right behind first base.
Master visited the concession stand first and was stepping over his seat from the row behind, handing out sodas and french fries, when the ball hit him.
He doesn’t remember how he got out of the stands for paramedics to reach him. He does remember being sure his eye was completely gone and being astounded to hear the game continuing.
Master rode in an ambulance to Moses Cone Hospital, where he stayed for five and a half hours of surgery to try to reconstruct his eye.
On Tuesday, Master was in Chapel Hill, making plans with an eye specialist to have his eye removed and be fitted with a prosthetic eye.
The best prognosis for keeping his left eye, he said, still held too much risk of an infection that could blind him completely.
In four days of virtual blindness since his injury, Master has been thinking about the fine balance his situation involved. A few inches to the left, and the ball’s force to his temple might have killed him, he thought.
But if he had spent a couple of seconds longer picking up napkins, the ball might have harmlessly hit empty seats. He recognizes his injury is due to bad luck.
He likes going to games and likes taking his family.
“The baseball stadium is a beautiful stadium and it’s good for the city,” Master said.
And yet, “We’ll never go see another baseball game,” Master said.
Master is the fourth person paramedics have treated for being hit by a baseball this year. None were treated for that injury in the 2007 season, said Alan Perdue, director of emergency services for Guilford County.
The Grasshoppers’ president and general manager, Donald Moore, said the team regrets Master’s injury.
“One of the many risks a spectator assumes while attending a baseball game is possible injury from foul balls,” Moore wrote in an e-mail to the News & Record. The stadium posts warnings on signs and on everyone’s ticket and makes safety announcements through the public address system. “We wish this gentleman a speedy recovery,” Moore wrote.