Empty the Bench

Broken bats occasionally find their way into the stands. Foul balls and home runs are always a hazzard. Now, a new safety fear threatens to plague fans at live Major League Baseball games: tipsy, overweight men doing swan dives.

Although we’re sincerely sorry she was the one victimized by a tumbling fat man at the New York Mets’ home opener, 58-year-old Ellen Massey practically writes this story herself with a slew of home-run quotes about her episode at Shea Stadium. Massey will require surgery on her vertebra after a 300-pound man presumably lost his balance and crushed her in the seventh inning of the Mets/Phillies game on Monday. She describes the unnamed eater as “a 300-pound human missile:”

Shortly after the seventh-inning stretch, she said, a man dressed in a green Army-type jacket tumbled from higher seats and onto her back, knocking the wind out of her and, ultimately, causing serious injury. “I only know he came flying,” Massey, 58, said Wednesday from her bed in Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. “I was literally not able to breathe for about half-a-minute or so. The first thing I was aware of was not being able to breathe, and then when I was able to breathe I was aware of the pain in my lower back.”

Massey’s nephew, Peter Rubens, 35, of Brooklyn, said the first sign that something was amiss was a splash of beer flying onto her at about 4 p.m., then a bump from the man, who is unidentified. “We were sitting and watching the ball game,” he said. “And in a split-second a rather large person, a man, came sort of tumbling down upon us and basically landed on my aunt’s head and neck.”

Massey, who said she goes to six or seven games a season, said she started going to the opener with family two years ago. “I have to say that in going to a baseball park, the only fear that has ever entered my mind is that I’d get hit by a hard ball,” she said. “I didn’t expect a 300-pound human missile to hit me in the back. That doesn’t come up on my list of fears.”

Nor did it on ours, Ms. Massey. Until now. The massive projectile has not yet been identified, though John Goodman was seen in the vicinity of Shea Stadium after the game with a box of Dunkin Donuts. ETB could not confirm whether the donuts were filled with custard or lard.

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