THE BRUSH BACK

Author

Matthew Garringer
August 16, 2023

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Today’s story is about one of the most violent acts to ever happen on a baseball field.

You may not remember the name Ben Christensen.

He never played in the big leagues, but he was drafted by the Cubs in the first round of the ’99 draft.

Before that, Christensen was a pitcher at Wichita State, and that’s where this whole thing went down.

During a game against the University of Evansville, Anthony Molina was about 24 feet from home plate, just minding his own damn business, and taking some hacks.

Wichita’s head coach at the time, Gene Stephenson, taught his pitchers to “brush back” on-deck hitters who took practice swings too close to the box.

So naturally, Christensen uncorked a fastball right at Molina’s face.

There was no time for him to react and the baseball hit him square in the eye.

Molina was immediately taken to the hospital, and Christensen was suspended for the rest of the season.

The horrific injury resulted in Molina’s vision falling from 20/10 to 20/400.

Somehow, Christensen still got drafted, but Molina never played baseball again.

He did, however, file a civil suit against Christensen and settled out of court in ’02 for a rumored $400K.

Ultimately, karma came back around and Ben fizzled out at age 26 in the Minor Leagues.

Then in a complete plot twist, Molina actually turned out to be a worse human being than Christensen.

In 2014, he pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse against an 8-year-old girl.

He was sentenced to six years in prison.

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STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Not gunna lie, this guy does strike me as a "Boof" - it weirdly fits him.

His big league career was nothing to write home about, but these days he helps build submarines for the military, which is pretty bad ass.

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