College baseball player Jose Avila took another bean ball Thursday when the California Supreme Court ruled that pitches aimed at a batter's head are a historic and intrinsic part of the national pastime.
"For better or worse," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for a 6-1 court, "being intentionally thrown at is a fundamental and inherent risk of the sport of baseball. It is not the function of tort law to police such conduct."
Intentional shots at batters are so ingrained by custom, she noted, that they're known in baseball lingo as bean balls, brushbacks and chin music.
"Some of the most respected baseball managers and pitchers," Werdegar added, "have openly discussed the fundamental place throwing at batters has in their sport."
Justice Joyce Kennard dissented, calling the majority ruling "a startling conclusion. It is contrary to the official view in the sport that such conduct 'should be -- and is -- condemned by everybody.'"
Avila was batting for the Rio Hondo Community College Roadrunners in a preseason practice game in early 2001 when an opposing pitcher for the Citrus Community College Owls hit him in the head with a pitch. Avila alleged that the pitcher had intentionally thrown at his head to retaliate for an Owls player being hit by a pitch in the previous inning.
According to Avila's complaint, his batting helmet cracked and he suffered "unspecified serious personal injuries." Avila sued, claiming that the Citrus Community College District should have provided better supervision over its pitcher, among other things.
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