What shakes a seasoned baseball manager more than a walk-off loss? Well, for Pirates’ Derek Shelton, it wasn’t the final score but a terrifying incident that occurred Wednesday night at PNC Park during the Pirates vs. Chicago Cubs game. A fan fell to the ground after toppling from the 21-foot Clemente Wall. Although the Pirates won the game, the incident became the breaking news, and the entire ballpark was in shock as the man stayed motionless until being taken off the field by the medical personnel.

Manager Shelton, when asked about the incident by the reporters, said, “I just want to offer thoughts and prayers with the incident that happened earlier in the game.”

The incident occurred right when the Pirates’ Andrew McCutchen pushed for a two-run double in the seventh inning and all of a sudden, leaving the fans frantically talking about it. It was a shocking sight to behold for many; however, once he was carted off, Shelton thanked the medical personnel and others for reacting to the incident immediately and providing treatment.

Concerned about the incident, Shelton added, “Even though it’s 350 feet away or whatever it is, I mean, the fact of how it went down and then lying motionless while the play is going on, I mean, Craig saw it, I saw it. We both got out there.” He and the Cubs manager, Craig Counsell, quickly intervened, and soon the medical staffs were on the ground.

But what was assumed to be igniting joy among the fans after the win turned into a disaster. It was quite evident that Derek Shelton was disturbed, saddened by the fan’s situation.

However, baseball has seen similar incidents of falls earlier as well. Now, this surely demands close inspection of the guardrails to ensure that such unfortunate events do not take place again.

MLB incidents that shook us from the core

It’s not the first time something like this has happened, and there were a few cases that eventually ended in fatalities as well. Even to this day, we still feel for the fatality that took place during the game between the Oakland Athletics and the Texas Rangers in 2011. Rangers’ Josh Hamilton retrieved a ball and threw it to a male fan who was in the first row. It was a heartwarming reaction from Hamilton, who tried to make his day, only to find out that the fan who came forward to catch the ball instead fell headfirst on the concrete below.

Remember the 2022 incident when a football fan fell from the escalator during the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Jets? Shocking will be an understatement, as the fan literally fell from a 40-foot height, following which he was transferred to the hospital and, unfortunately, succumbed to his injuries. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

In 2015, during a game between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees, another fan had to bear a similar fate to the other two incidents. During the seventh inning of the game, Gregor Murrey, a 60-year-old man, accidentally fell from the stands while the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez was moving down to his home plate. Fans were shell-shocked as they watched the man fall from the upper deck right into the lower-level stands at Turner Field and the fall was so severe that he succumbed to his injuries soon after that.

Sadly, there hasn’t been any solution to the problem yet. We all hope that baseball management takes the necessary precautionary measures to ensure that this kind of incident does not occur again. What’s your take on it?