Girl Hit By Foul Ball Cracked Skull And Suffered Seizures, Attorney Says

Major League Baseball’s problem of protecting its spectators took another troubling turn on Wednesday.

An attorney representing the family of a 2-year-old girl who was struck by a foul ball at a Houston Astros game last month said she fractured her skull and has suffered seizures from the incident. The accident and others have spurred renewed calls for MLB teams to further extend the netting that shields fans from hard-hit balls. (Teams already had expanded the netting in 2018.)

Houston attorney Richard Mithoff sent a letter informing team owner Jim Crane that the girl’s family has retained his counsel. While no lawsuit has been filed, he relayed the family’s “concern about making sure this doesn’t happen again,” The Washington Post reported .

“I hope and I believe moving forward that Jim will make the right decisions,” he told The Post.

The lawyer sent out a press release detailing the girl’s injuries: a skull fracture along with associated subdural bleeding, brain contusions, and brain edema, the Houston Chronicle reported .

While recovering at home, she’s getting treatment at Baylor College of Medicine’s Blue Bird Circle Clinic for Pediatric Neurology, and the seizures persist , according to the attorney.

“The Astros continue to send our thoughts and prayers to the young girl and her family,” the Astros said in a statement to HuffPost on Thursday. “We continue to respect the family’s request for privacy and have no further comment at this time.”

The young fan, who has not been publicly identified, was struck in the head by a foul ball off the bat of Cubs outfielder Albert Almora Jr. on May 29. The sight of the impact sent Almora into an emotional tailspin, but at least one outlet reported at the time that the little fan was expected to be OK.

Major league teams extended the safety netting at their ballparks in 2018 after a 2017 incident in which Todd Frazier of the New York Yankees lined a foul ball that slammed into a little girl. This week the Dodgers joined the White Sox and the Nationals in announcing plans to extend their stadiums’ netting further, CBS reported . 

Mithoff did not immediately return HuffPost’s requests for comment.