ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.—The debate over whether Major League Baseball should better protect its pitchers from head injuries will be reignited after Tuesday’s 6-4 Blue Jays win over the Tampa Bay Rays in which Toronto starter J.A. Happ was struck on the side of the head by a line drive and stretchered off the field.

Tropicana Field fell deathly silent in the second inning after Rays centre fielder Desmond Jennings drove Happ’s pitch right back towards the mound, striking the left-hander on the left side of his head.

It was a sickening sound — the ball’s audible impact against Happ’s skull — and as scary a scene as one can witness on a baseball field.

“It’s devastating,” said Jays pitcher R.A. Dickey. “I could barely watch it. . . . It paralyzes you a little bit because you certainly can empathize. You’ve been out there, that close to the hitter. That is the position on the field closest to the batter. When it sounds like two bats — when you hear the sound off the bat and it sounds like it hits another bat — it’s scary, it’s really scary. I just started praying on the spot. That’s all I knew to do.”

While dangerous comebackers have always been part of the game, they appear to be growing more severe.

Last September, Brandon McCarthy, then with the Oakland A’s, was struck in the head by a hard line drive, suffering a skull fracture, brain contusion and epidural hemorrhage. Though McCarthy left the field of his own accord, he later had to undergo emergency brain surgery. He has since made a full recovery and now pitches for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

In the wake of McCarthy’s injury, calls to mandate some kind of head protection for pitchers increased.

This past off-season, MLB tested a series of padded caps, designed to provide protection with minimal discomfort to the pitcher. But the equipment remains only in the testing phase.

Happ, 30, moved little after he was hit, crumpling to the ground and clutching his head. Blood was visible pooling in his left hand — with which he had grabbed his head — before he was attended to by trainers and paramedics.

The ballpark fell so silent during the 11-minute injury delay that when Jays reliever Brad Lincoln began to warm up in the bullpen, the pop of his pitches hitting the catcher’s mitt echoed throughout the building, while players and fans alike held their collective breath.

“You could hear a pin drop in that whole stadium,” said Ricky Romero. “It was a scary moment. Obviously our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family.”

Happ was eventually strapped to a stability board — gauze bandaged to the left side of his head — and lifted onto a stretcher. He appeared to be talking to paramedics, with his eyes open, as he was rolled off the field, offering a faint wave to the crowd with his right hand. He was taken to a local hospital for testing, but there was no immediate update on his condition.

“I think the last indication was that he was alert and feeling better and had gone for a CT scan. That’s the last I heard,” Dickey said.

Jennings advanced to third base on the play, which was scored a triple, as the Rays scored a pair of runs to take a 3-1 second-inning lead while Happ lay near motionless in front of the mound.

According to Rule 5.10, an umpire may declare the play dead “when an accident incapacitates a player or an umpire.” The rule was not employed on the play by either home-plate umpire Marty Foster or crew chief Tim Welke.

Though they looked stunned in the immediate aftermath of Happ’s injury — while the Rays added another run in the second — the Jays began to rally late in the game, eventually tying it in the eighth on back-to-back doubles by Melky Cabrera and Jose Bautista.

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That set the stage for another come-from-behind victory on a ninth-inning home run, this time by the usually light-hitting Maicer Izturis, who took Rays right-hander Joel Peralta deep to right field for the game-winning blast.

Coming a day after J.P. Arencibia’s own game-winning ninth-inning homer, the victory brought the Jays their first three-game winning streak of the season and snapped the Rays’ streak of 17 consecutive home series wins against Toronto, dating back to 2007.

It should have been a time of celebration for the Jays, who have had little to celebrate this season. Instead, the mood was sombre in the visiting clubhouse.

“It makes you sick to your stomach,” Romero said. “In all the years that I’ve been playing I’ve never seen something like that happen live.”