It is the fundamental rule of baseball: everybody gets a turn. Even the greatest hitters come to bat only one time through the order. When the manager calls your name, you get a chance to stand in the box, stare down the pitcher and do something.

Adam Greenberg got the call in the top of the ninth inning in Miami on July 9, 2005, as a pinch-hitter for the Chicago Cubs. But he never really had a chance. The first pitch he saw was a 92-mile-an-hour fastball from Valerio de los Santos, and he did not see it long. It struck him just below his right ear.

“I lost control of my eyes and thought my head was split open,” Greenberg said Thursday. “I kept saying, ‘Stay alive,’ and just repeated that. That will never leave me. But it doesn’t haunt me.”

Greenberg sustained vision problems and vertigo. He played 674 more games through 2011, all in the minors and most for the independent Bridgeport Bluefish in Connecticut, his home state.