Line Drive Fells Pitcher

Everyone who saw the ball come off Julio Franco’s bat and strike Willie Blair in the head was thankful the pitcher wound up with just a broken jaw.

“I heard it from center field,” Detroit’s Brian Hunter said after the Tigers beat the Cleveland Indians 2-0 Sunday in a game overshadowed by a horrible line drive back to the mound. “I heard a loud, popping sound, like it came off the bat and then came off the bat again.”

Blair sustained a fractured jaw when he was struck by Franco’s liner in the sixth - a drive clocked at 107 mph by a radar gun.

Blair was taken off the field in an ambulance after shutting out his former team for 5-2/3 innings.

The Tigers said Blair (3-2) would be hospitalized overnight.

The accident came nearly 40 years to the day after Indians pitcher Herb Score was hit in the eye by a line drive by Gil McDougald of the New York Yankees on May 7, 1957, at Cleveland.