Fan hit by Marlon Byrd's foul ball OK a day later

Nick Thalhammer's Twitter profile picture is of him, girlfriend Amanda Parker and the baseball that hit him square in face during Saturday's Reds-Cardinals game.

Thalhammer, reached by email Sunday morning, is fine after being hit by a Marlon Byrd line drive in Saturday's Cardinals victory over the Reds at Great American Ball Park.

Saturday's game was delayed several minutes after Byrd hit a liner to the stands in right that hit Thalhammer above the right eye.

Saturday's game was delayed several minutes after Byrd hit a liner to the stands in right that hit Thalhammer above the right eye. He was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, where he underwent a CAT scan and was cleared to leave after two hours.

"I'm feeling pretty good for a dude taking one to the face," Thalhammer, a 32-year-old Norwood resident, wrote the Enquirer on Sunday morning. "I thought my eyeball might have been laying on the ground when it first happened. I'm thanking God I can see today. The swelling is setting in now, but I should be fine long run."

That was good news to Byrd, who hit the ball. Thalhammer tweeted Byrd three pictures, including the one of him and Parker smiling with the ball. Byrd said he was relieved to see Thalhammer was OK.

"I hit it, I hit it flush, you see the ball go into the fans and you hope it misses everyone, and then I saw it bounce back out and I knew it hit somebody," Byrd said.

The game was delayed more than three minutes, as most of the fans in right field were turned away from the field, watching as Thalhammer was attended to. Home plate umpire Joe West held the game up as first base umpire Kerwin Danley tried to get people to turn around toward the game.

"Very unfortunate for that fan," Cardinals starter Michael Wacha told reporters after the game. "We had too many people in the stands with their back toward the field so it wasn't smart continuing the game at that moment."

Now that he's better and can see, Thalhammer said he couldn't help but note the irony that he'd told Parker to make sure she was paying attention to the game, but at that moment, he was looking down at his phone at a picture he'd just taken of the two of them.

"(I) was looking at it is why I didn't see the ball," he said.

Replays showed the ball shattered his glasses and others tweeted photos of the blood surrounding the area where he was sitting.

Byrd said even if Thalhammer had been watching, it could be difficult to avoid a line drive.

"You just hope the fans are safe," Byrd said. "It's hard to get out of the way of a line drive, period. It comes quick. It can fade and all that, you just don't know."

Byrd also noted that he's happy the family section is behind the netting, and that's where his family sits for games.