What did the ball say to Javy Lopez's face? SMACK! pic.twitter.com/cJG4qjYCWl
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 11, 2018
Ouch.
Javier López was an elite athlete in his day. He played professional baseball for 13 seasons, the final six and a half in San Francisco as a reliever for the Giants, where he won three World Series Championships.
But you know that already. We just bring it up because we’d expect someone with López’s athletic resume to be quicker on his feet than the video at the top of this post would suggest. But alas.
Tuesday evening before the San Francisco Giants hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks at AT&T Park, López appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area’s Giants pregame show, where he found himself throwing wiffle balls to a young Giants fan. Apparently he was a bit too precise with one pitch in particular, because the young batter made solid contact and smacked a ball right back at López’s face.
After pausing for a moment , the former reliever acted like he was going to bull-rush the young fan for hitting him in the head.
“I think that segment’s over with,” López said after the incident. “That hurt a little bit.”
López handled getting hit in the face with a wiffle ball on live Television about as well as one could. Tough to make a defensive play on a ball screaming at your head from 15 feet away. But we bet he thinks a bit differently about his defensive readiness the next time this segment shows it’s head.