They were two of the most searing, disturbing images of the first half of the 2019 Major League Baseball season. A man with his arms enveloping a small girl, rushing up the stairs, through the crowd, so she could receive medical attention. And a Chicago Cubs player doubled over in horror at the effect of his high-speed line drive into the stands.
It happened May 29 at Houston's Minute Maid Park, when Albert Almora Jr.'s foul ball rifled just past the third-base dugout into an area unprotected by netting.
About two years earlier, in an eerily similar situation at Yankee Stadium, the New York Yankees' Todd Frazier hit a foul liner that left the bat at 105 mph and also struck a little girl just past the third-base dugout.