A YES Network cameraman was hospitalized after he was hit in the head by an errant throw during the New York Yankees game against the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday night.
Pete Stendel was working the camera on the right side of the Yankees’ dugout in New York on Wednesday when Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson tried to turn a double play in the fifth inning. Henderson, after making the play at second base, overthrew first. The ball hit Henderson directly in the head, and sent him falling backwards into the well.
The game was delayed for nearly 20 minutes while medical staff attended to Stendel, who was later stretchered off the field and taken to a local hospital. Stendel raised a few fingers in a salute to the Yankee Stadium crowd as he went off the field, and the YES Network said after the game that he was conscious and undergoing tests.
“Definitely praying for him. It was good to see him obviously coherent and obviously raising his hand going off,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, via ESPN. “But I saw it pretty well right away, and it was very scary. I didn’t see how he fell back, but I knew what could’ve been possible falling back, on top of the impact from the velocity of the ball hitting him … Obviously a difficult scene there, and just hoping he’s OK.”
The Orioles put up four runs in the sixth inning thanks largely to a Jordan Westburg triple, and then added two runs off a Ryan O’Hearn home run in the ninth to take the 6-3 win. That snapped a two-game losing skid for Baltimore and marked its second win in its last eight games.
The fourth and final game of the series is set for Thursday night.